Rising Sign
by ninety6tears
Summary: After the events of "Maelstrom," the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise discovers a lone Colonial pilot drifting out of a wormhole. Still reeling from an abandoned war, Kara Thrace awkwardly adjusts to life in the Federation.
1. Chapter 1

"_What_?"

Spock lifted his eyes from his report, and sighed. "Captain, that is the fifth time you have used that exclamation while I have attempted to explain the situation with the woman on board—"

"Okay, just slow down..." Jim staggered and stopped where he and Spock were making their way out of the landing bay. "She just showed up in that thing and has never even heard of the Federation. And she's completely human."

"And her language and dialect is typical of Terran American English. But she claims to be from some 'colonial fleet,' and, interestingly, insisted that Mr. Scott's accent is typical of somewhere called Aerilon."

Jim squinted in confusion. "Has she been cooperative?"

The Vulcan blinked for a second before replying, "She was most attentive when I mentioned this ship is from Earth. And was then quite alarmed to learn the population of the planet as well as its technology. She immediately insisted that we take her there, and when we explained the impossibility of immediately doing so, she became increasingly...animated. I believe she is reacting to stress and does not mean to be violent, however."

Kirk slowly cocked his eyebrow. "Did she hit somebody?"

"She nearly committed a minor assault on Ensign Reah. She appeared distressed but not resistant when she was escorted to the brig."

Kirk sighed. "Put her in the slam, huh?"

Spock didn't bother with his usual dissection of slang, merely explained, "The uncertainty of her origin as well as her behavior gave me reason to evaluate her as a possible threat to the crew; because she boarded as a guest rather than as a captive, I made it clear that she had the option of leaving the ship without our assistance. Given that she opted for arrest, she is either willing to peacefully cooperate or—"

"She's lying, and she's got something up her sleeve?" Kirk finished, then shrugged. "Not a likely explanation, unless she somehow knows how to break out of our cells."

"Indeed. I would advise you to consult with her immediately, and employ Bones for a lie detector..."

"No, no," Kirk made a wave of his hand. "I don't think we should go that far. But is there really any way to know if her story checks out?"

"Most likely not, Captain." Spock paused, calculating his next words. "There is another detail which may be paramount, depending on which theory we subscribe to. The spacial anomaly in our proximity, which Chekov projected was likely to be a wormhole..."

Kirk narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, what about it?"

"She claims that she came out of it."

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The brig room was rather dark when Kirk entered but he could see that the woman was lying down examining the ceiling, very still, before he commanded the lights to go brighter, dragging a chair in after him and setting down a small box at the rickety table by the wall.

She was slowly sitting up, a bruised and tired-looking woman maybe around his age, short yellowy hair raking back under her anxious fingers as she bit her lip and gave him a sorely expectant look. "I can already tell you're not really suited for the interrogation jobs, so let's get this over with."

His mouth curled up a little as he shook his head. "That's not exactly why I'm here. I'm sure Mr. Spock told you he's not the usual commanding officer...And that would be me. Captain James T. Kirk."

Her eyes narrowed at him. "...Aren't you a little young to command a starship?"

He was watching her closely, the way her fingers scraped anxiously at her lap, the stiff way she sat as if expecting something to blow up any second, and he knew Bones would be demanding to do a check-up on her if he got even one look. But later. He started off by offering, "Maybe. I'm twenty-seven. How old are you?"

She didn't answer, just kind of scowled at him for a second as he began to leaf through the stuff in the box, most of which had been tucked somewhere in her flight smock, pulling up one of the weird cornerless parchments that was something like an ID badge.

"Kara Thrace..._Captain_ Kara Thrace. Something tells me we're pretty different kinds of captains."

She finally rolled her eyes and seemed to resign herself to the consequences of not playing along. "Look, whatever you're trying to do, with the small talk..."

Kirk gave a gesture as if to promise he would cut the crap, assuring, "All I'm trying to do is calm you down, you seem...I don't even know. There's no deception, I'm honestly trying to evaluate as soon as possible whether you even need to be in here."

"It would probably calm me down if you would leave me alone," she muttered.

"You want to spend the night in the brig?"

She considered her reply for long enough that she seemed to be swaying a bit. "Is this really the brig? My bed back home is smaller than this."

It was a slightly feisty way of saying she could deal with whatever he gave her, and while he thought she was still missing the point, he laughed.

"You think I'm kidding?" she cocked an eyebrow, and yeah, they were on a level now. "And to answer your question, I'm a pilot, not a commander."

"It's a fighter vessel?" he asked. She nodded. "We've never seen anything quite like that...What's it called? Starbuck?"

She squinted, then comfortably corrected, "_No_—That's my _call sign_."

"...Oh. What does it mean?" He interrupted himself then with a wave of his hand. "Look. Your story is that you came out of a wormhole. How'd you come to fall into one in the first place?"

Her mouth opened but no words came out for quite some time. "I was going after an enemy fighter. We were in this...storm, and..."

Kirk wasn't sure what to make of how unsettled she seemed about it, and he thought suddenly that the answer to the question didn't matter, cause she was obviously someone who had had a hell of a rough day and maybe that was that for now. He quietly interrupted, "There was an accident?"

She just slightly nodded, said, "I can't even try to explain. I don't know, I don't..._remember _how the hell I got here."

She seemed a bit less fragile than when he'd walked into the cell, but there was something chaotic attached to her, in the way she kept looking around like she expected everything to reveal itself as something else. Considering how surreal her very appearance was to _them_, he could imagine this whole thing was making her feel a little crazy.

"Alright," he said, standing up out of his chair. "Let's go."

.

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"Hold _still_, lady," Bones growled. "You got some kinda problem with doctors?"

"I have a problem being treated by someone I don't know," Kara replied, glaring up from her sitting position on the sick bay bed.

"Name's Leonard McCoy. Nice to meet you," Bones grumbled. "Now, if you would let me try to confirm whether you're a total nutcase or just a damn liar..."

She squinted at the psychotricorder McCoy was wielding above her forehead. "How come the captain calls you 'Bones'?"

"What about 'Starbuck'?" he returned. "Where'd you get a name like that?"

She sighed. "D'you guys even use call signs?"

"Used to, not now. It's not the military, you know. There is no military, not exactly."

"Boy scouts in space. Well, isn't this cute."

"Look, I'm sure we've both had a hard day, so if you could knock off the chatter..." But his voice trailed off lazily as he examined his tricorder screen. "...Oh...kay. Jim!"

"What?" came the reply from across the room where the captain was talking to another officer.

"Symptoms indicate recent shock, but relatively sane."

"Kay!"

"No doctor-patient confidentiality, huh?" Kara said, rolling her eyes as Bones picked up a basic medical scanner and began a thorough check-up on the rest of her body. "Would you cut it out?"

"If you don't mind," he replied sourly, "I'd like to get a sense of what your medical technology was like. Maybe I'll find something that needs attention in the process. You got somewhere else to be?"

With a resigned rolling of her eyes, Kara shifted her legs up and sighed back into a lying position. He had no objection to her shifting and just kept examining her, occasionally making noises of vague dissatisfaction but never bringing anything to her attention. Kara was only starting to figure out how advanced these devices were when he passed the scanner loosely down her arm to where her hands rested anxiously over her waist. McCoy paused in his observation, his eyebrow going up, and he passed the little cylinder back up and then made a more thorough scan, just over the fingers of her right hand.

With his eyes continuously fixed on the tricorder screen, he may not have noticed the way her body immediately tensed all over, probably didn't see the defensive edge flicking her eyes wide and her lips tighter together. For a couple seconds, oblivious, he glared at his readings that she knew just might be indicating four hairline fractures drawing a lightning line across her knuckles.

And he just muttered a sympathetic "Ouch," mostly to himself, and just moved on. Kara let out a breath and then stayed quiet until he said she was good to leave.

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Both sides seemed grateful that as strange as the whole situation was, there was no good reason to believe she was some crook constructing an elaborate lie to get on board. As for whether she was crazy, the jury was still out, but everyone who stopped by the landing bay to look at the Viper was pretty impressed. Kirk managed to peel her away from protectively making sure nobody was messing with her "bird" when he sensed that even though they'd decided she wasn't much of a risk, her nervousness indicated she wasn't sure if she trusted the crew at all. And if she was actually from a completely different world, she wasn't bound by their laws, and he owed her some explanations too.

After he'd spent a good half hour presenting her with collected images and data in the observation deck, he finally asked why she was so interested in collecting proof of all the life forms they knew about, not just information about Earth, though she was certainly very invested in that. She said something about needing to see the life that existed outside of the spaceship to really get that this was really happening, and that she was pretty convinced, despite the fact that she couldn't see it for herself, at least not yet.

"Why would we...lie about this stuff?" he asked. "You think this is some elaborate ruse to fuck with you or something?"

"'Fuck'?" Kara smirked, and blinked. Jim also blinked. Returning to the heavier set of her dazed expression, she turned back to the monitor and said, "There was a war. Where I came from. I wasn't sure if I was being toyed with or something...You know what, that's way too long a story. I'm pretty sure you're all human. Except for..."

He wasn't sure how that was relevant, but he let it slide for now. "Yeah, you met Spock. He's a—"

"No, you know what, I don't even wanna know," Kara said with a dismissive wave of her hand, continuing to numbly explain: "The point is, there was no life. There was a system of twelve planets, and uh...They were nuked. Completely destroyed. I've been on the run with a handful of survivors for years in a small fleet of ships, looking for a habitable planet. Looking for Earth, actually."

"Wait..." The interruption didn't mean much of anything. Kirk's face just seemed to chase through a hundred understatements like iThat sucks/i before resorting to speechlessness.

"And here I am," Kara added with a wry smile, and then pointed at the viewscreen with a swivelling dimensional image of Earth: "And here it is. And...every person I've been with for the past few years...is...uh. Look, you better have something alcoholic on board, or I'm gonna..."

"What's your poison?" Kirk quickly asked, happy to be able to offer something.

"Gods, I don't care. Give me something...something very clear."

On their way to hitting up Chekov for some vodka, Kirk had a moment of consideration after which he muttered, "Look, if you want your stuff back that you had in your uniform..."

"Surely you don't mean everything, captain," Kara said with a nervous smile, not quite granting a respect for his authority into the last word. "It can't be okay with whatever protocol you have to let me run around with a sidearm."

"You had a _gun_? What kind of gun?"

"What do you mean, what kind of gun?"

"Well—Does it use bullets?" Kirk asked excitedly.

She gave him a look like it was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard, and with a patronizing sneer, slowly said, "It's a _gun_. Bullets come out of it. Into people's faces...Look, I'd like to have it back anyway. There's a deck of cards in that belt, and what the hell else are we doing tonight besides cross-cultural comparison drinking games?"

One hour later a small crowd consisting of Kara, Kirk, Uhura, Scotty, and Spock had significantly livened the mood in the rec room. With the exception of Spock, everyone had had trouble catching onto the rules of triad, and if it wasn't bad enough that she'd had to explain the colors over and over again, Kirk had been the one to volunteer a different game when Kara looked ready to throttle Spock for winning too many times.

"...So you have to drink one cause you don't have hypovaccinations. And then it's your turn."

After gladly taking a shot, Kara cleared her throat and muttered, "Um. Pyramid."

Uhura said, "As in..."

"As in the sport." She looked rather depressed when there were looks of confusion round the table. "Damn...Drink up."

Of course Kirk had failed to take into account that Spock, being unable to feel the effects of the alcohol, would also be frustratingly adept at this game. After noting the tenth look of suspicion at Spock's impassive demeanor, Kirk leaned over from where he was sitting between his friend and Kara to quietly tell her, "I know you don't believe me, but I absolutely swear, he's not that bad once you get to know him." It didn't help.

"So you're telling me..." Scotty mused after his sixth shot, "You're tellin' me...That you'd be able to essentially beam a grapefruit, at faster than light speed—"

"We call it jumping, not beaming," Kara explained. "And yeah. When we've got the fuel, it's how we get around."

Scotty's mouth opened into an amazed 'O' before forming his next sentence. "...Yeh transport entire_ ships _to specific coordinates? Yeh can beam your vessels! But yeh don't have _replicators_?"

Many had forgotten it was Spock's turn; his eyebrow cocked and he simply said, "Antimatter containment." Kara poured herself a new shot.

Kirk was pointing a finger across the table at Scotty, then indicating Kara. "Did you get a look at her ride?"

In response to Scotty's look of puzzlement, Uhura asked, "You haven't seen the Viper?"

"The _what_?—I was workin' on the com system tuh'day."

"Oh, man," Kirk said. "Get a look before the night's through. Looks _ancient_, but it flies, apparently."

"Excuse me?" Kara interrupted. "My bird is not a museum exhibit."

"Does this Viper have the technology to do this, uh—" Scotty stuttered over his excitement, "the jump technology?"

"Frak, man, I _wish_."

Spock gave a thoughtful tilt of his head. "Perhaps it would be possible to adapt warp capacity...As I understand it is much more complicated with smaller vessels, particularly if it is not already equipped with our sensors..."

Scotty's face was lighting up, but Kara only glared at Spock more for even suggesting it. "No. No way."

"I wuldn' let anything happen to her," Scotty pleaded. "I'm a bit of a genius, yeh know—"

"He is," Kirk passively confirmed.

"_No_." Kara threatened, "If you take even a screw off..."

"Right, alright, nevermind..." Scotty pacified. Uhura laughed in sympathy at his disappointment.

Just then McCoy, who had offered to do a replicator run after declining to join in on the evening, came up holding a tray with a random array of items he started handing out at the table. With a dry remark about oral fixations he handed Jim the glossy round lollipop he'd apparently requested. He muttered, "Fuck you, Bones" between laughs, quickly unwrapping it and sticking it in his mouth where the white stick hung out lazily from his teeth.

As Bones passed by Kara, she was leaning back into a yawn, and what caught her eye then was something tucked under his arm that looked a _whole_ lot like a humidor.

"Um." Without hesitance, she reached out to take it and asked, "What's this?"

"Hey, don't—" Bones protested, to no avail, as she took the box and opened it up to find the long skinny things that didn't really look like she'd expected. "Jim, you wanted one of those." The comment seemed to infer that they definitely hadn't come from a replicator.

"Yeah, thanks, Bones, but my mouth's a little busy now."

"Listen, I'm trying not to get my hopes up," Kara started to explain. "But...we ran out of cigars a_ long _time ago..."

With a scoff Bones explained, "So did we. These are Orion and they're not exactly cigars, but..."

"Try one," Kirk said.

She picked out one of the wrapped tubes and noticed that Bones was digging into his pocket, and set it between her lips. She tipped her head back while he flicked on a lighter that looked very, very old, and held it at the tip. As soon as it lit, Kara instinctively puffed, pulled out the cigar and exhaled a gradual stream of milky, aromatic smoke.

She then just closed her eyes for a second, and looked up behind her with a wide smile. "_Damn_. Thanks, Doc." He only gave that a slightly uncomfortable shrug.

The crowd cleared out when it was a pretty reasonable time to go to bed, but Kirk and Starbuck remained relaxed in their seats until long after they'd left, and since they were probably the two loudest drunks to ever board a space vessel, it didn't really feel like the party had ended. Once Kara had actually managed to drool vodka from giggling too hard, Kirk realized it was time to call it a night, once he got control of his last laughing fit.

"Okay, wait. Hah. I'm the worst host ever," Kirk managed to say apologetically. "I haven't set you up a room on the ship."

"Oh no," Kara replied coyly, rocking her eyes up to the ceiling as she daintily sucked on the lollipop that had somehow changed hands at some point. "Where am I going to sleep tonight?"

"Well." Kirk's eyes were comically wide for a second. He wasn't even sober enough to be clever and subtle about it, so he just started laughing as he kind of realized he probably didn't need to be. "Are you...uh..."

"Come on." She laughed and squirmed out of her seat, grabbing him by the arm.

By the time they'd managed to get on and off the turbolift she was asking, "How come I'm hoisting you all over the place when I'm more drunk than you?" Kirk towered at six or seven inches taller than her, but he was skinny and light, so it was no big chore. Still, she had no idea where they were going and she wasn't sure how she felt about the possibility of any members of the crew spotting her carting their captain off to bed.

"What are you talking about?" Jim mumbled. "I swear...I haven't been this drunk since I left Iowa."

He moved to carry more of his own weight, and they wielded each other down the hallway at a sluggish pace. "What's Iowa?" Kara asked.

"It's...huh. How to define Iowa..." Jim thought for a hazy second, then asked, "What's the shittiest place you can think of?"

"...New Caprica."

"Well..." Kirk raised his eyebrow and said simply, "Iowa...is New Caprica. Uh, this is my room."

As soon as Kara turned them both to head into Jim's cabin, the door automatically opened. She quickly exclaimed, "You sure got a lotta space."

"Yeah," he said flatly, licking his lips. "I gotta lotta space." His unrelated afterthought was his lips meeting Kara's, drawing an almost-giggle from her as she comfortably reciprocated and eagerly pulled them both through the door. In their haste, they somehow lost their footing and fell into a heap on the floor just inside Jim's quarters, a couple limbs hanging out the threshold and keeping the door from closing.

Jim laughed quite heartily as he untangled himself from under her, feeling a lot less of a need to be careful than he usually would with a woman he'd just met that day. It was kind of freeing, if weird, that they were so physically comfortable already, in a way that didn't _have_ to be sexual, but hell, he wasn't gonna complain if...

Kara pointedly shoved Jim down on his back and started taking her tops off. "This is gonna be the worst sex ever, you know."

"I know," he replied, laughing, watching her bare stomach skim out from under the clothing. "We are pretty drunk..."

Her voice lowered to a slightly more distant sense of abandon. "Doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you."

"...Oh, I like you," Jim realized, laughing in increasing frequency, his chest bouncing up and down. "I like you a lot."

She rolled her eyes and then shoved his legs back a little out of the threshold. He was grabbing her down over him, pressing his fingers down the pattern of her ribs, as the door automatically sealed shut.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Author's Note:_**_ There is a pretty big reference to TOS in this chapter...Hopefully it's not confusing to those who haven't seen it._

_._

_.  
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Once Kara was given her own room, a modest guest space close to the ship's kitchen, it usually only felt bothersome in its emptiness. The general rumor mill caught on from how often she was seen hanging around Kirk's cabin, even though a lot of the time she was there just to be surrounded by a place that seemed lived-in rather than lonely. The sex was a by-product of spending a lot of time with someone who was basically the only person in this bizarre universe she could currently call a friend.

As for domestic romance, the crew had the wrong idea. Even though Kirk had never quite managed from the start to talk to Starbuck in a professionally inquisitive manner, like a captain should be talking to a passenger in an unexplained situation like this, their conversations were like something between roommates getting to know each other, just sometimes occurring in a lazy afterglow while tangled in Jim's undersized comforter.

"Motorcycle accident," Jim was explaining as Kara traced a fingernail over a scar above his shoulder blade. "I swerved to avoid something and basically fell on a mailbox, it's not a very impressive story..."

She chuckled quietly. "They couldn't fix you up?"

He shrugged. "I lived out in the country and I was pretty far from any hospital. I guess I didn't think it looked that bad."

"Huh. It's weird to imagine you so..._rural_."

He laughed at that for a second. "So what happened to you?...Come on, I've noticed it."

She dismissed it with, "I got shot in the stomach."

He sat up, wryly scrutinizing. "You're a shitty liar, Thrace. It's okay, I was just curious."

She sighed, stiffened herself a little and said, "I was captured and...kind of experimented on. It's a long story."

"...God...It's like a horror story every time you tell me this stuff."

She was cringing just a little. "I keep forgetting it's all 'one god' with you guys."

"What?...Oh, that's right." Jim looked vaguely perplexed. "We're not like that, you know, I can assure you there are some polytheists on board..."

"That's not the point. Forget it." Kara rubbed a hand over her still sleepy eyes, "And yeah, it kind of was a horror story, be glad you weren't there. As for how safe it is here, I've got a good handful of opinions about how far_ your _technology has gone, but hey, I'm just a _guest_, so..."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Jim asked, nearly laughing. "And don't act like my job's easy, you haven't even been here a week."

"Come on, it's tame around here," Kara teased.

"No, it's not," he was really laughing then, cockily, demonstrating his opinion by playfully smothering her back into the blankets, threading his fingers tightly around hers.

"Off," she grumbled, and when he didn't move, she snickered and quickly managed to roll him over onto his back with the help of a feisty knee to his stomach. He grunted as she wrestled his arms down.

"Hey—" he wriggled one arm free, but then she was just sitting up, poised comfortably with her thighs sitting above his, arms crossed.

"You're pretty close with your crew, right?" she demanded. "You trust them?"

"Yeah, I think you could say that."

"The one with the ears?"

"You know his name, Starbuck. And...yes, definitely him."

"What would you do if he pulled out a phaser one day and tried to kill you?"

"I wouldn't do anything, I would be dead," he said with a crooked smart-ass expression. She dug a mean pinch into his ribs. "Seriously, what kind of question is that? It wouldn't happen. Unless..."

She raised her eyebrows.

"Unless there was some kind of impostor. Or if something was wrong with him. And then, well, Bones would look at him, and then...probably after a few other things go wrong in the same day...we'd figure it out. And as for how I'd handle a mutiny, if my crew starts rebelling against me, I must be doing something seriously wrong."

Kara just rolled her eyes. "You guys really aren't used to not being able to fix things."

"...Most of the time, maybe." Then he added, "Except for this thing with you...but we're on it. We'll figure something out."

Kara let out a sigh, biting her bottom lip. "You know—"

"Nuh-uh. I don't want to hear it."

"Even with how very smart you guys are," she said with an exaggerated tone of delicacy, "I'm not stupid. The chances of finding some way to send me back just by studying your little readings on my lucky wormhole..."

"Are slim. But Spock's a genius, and he's working on it."

"Spock said the chances were _obsolete_. He's only doing this because you asked him to." She shook her head down at Jim. "Or out of scientific interest. Whichever. Meanwhile, I can tell there are things you're supposed to be doing that you're holding off on doing."

"Helping a passenger is a legitimate reason to hold off on mission work."

"Yeah, maybe I'm sick of being a passenger. Hanging around here...eating your food and frakking you isn't my idea of an occupation."

Jim smiled dryly up at her, pulling her down and attempting to wrestle her back over, but at the last second she managed to pin him down again, playfully muttering, "Weakling!"

"As annoying but also...exciting it is that you could probably kick my ass..." Kara responded to that by shimmying lower against him and gripping his hips. "You should get off me before you make me late."

She shrugged and threw herself onto her back next to him, and he slid out of bed.

Later when things were pretty idle, he showed her around the routines on the bridge. She had a lot to say about how stupid it was to design the ship so that the most crucial officers were always at a location that was so vulnerable to attacks; Spock had turned away from his post to cock an eyebrow, and Sulu just said, "Chekov's been complaining about that for years."

"...Captain."

"Yeah?"

Spock was primly turning away from his station again. "There is an incoming vessel that appears to be Klingon."

A slow second of instinct before Kirk said, "Hail them."

"Sir, I don't think I need to remind you of the message we received about the incidents of unprovoked attacks on well-equipped—" Uhura acknowledged that Kirk indeed didn't, and added the fractured, "We should be sure that they—"

"Yes, I know. If we need—"

The first thing Kara registered in the next moment was a sudden pain in her gut when the banister on the elevated level dug into her, the ship rocking violently forward, chairs rolling away from stations, and Kirk slamming his hand on something nearby to balance himself.

"RED ALERT! SHIELDS!"

Kara's eyes widened, scanning the bridge around her and feeling an instinctive jittering in her spine that she couldn't place into any helpful motion; Kirk took a flicker of a moment to tell her, "Get somewhere safer."

"Captain, we're being hailed."

"Viewscreen."

And then there was some ugly guy panneling into translucence against the backdrop of stars through the front window, and Kirk was somehow being civil and ripping him a new one at the same time after it was suggested they hand over a bunch of crap Kara had never heard of. But she assumed it was pretty valuable, given his knee jerk of adamance, and remembered that the crew had confessed themselves unable to replicate her any new clothes because of a temporary energy shortage, one which they hadn't considered a big problem at the time, but it was increasingly evident to her that perhaps the_ Enterprise _had just been found with her pants down.

A mean blow to the shield shuddered them a little sideways, this one toppling Kirk straight back into Kara, and then somebody was confirming a fat load of critical damage to what was left of their shield protection. And the captain barked, "Evasive maneuvers" before shoving Kara back by the elbow.

"Chekov: torpedoes. Starbuck, you're not supposed to be here."

Her call sign made her snap into pure instinct, and she definitely heard him that time. She turned and ran out of the bridge.

Five minutes later shields were lagging into useless percentitudes that had Spock shaking his head instead of reading them out loud; Kirk stood on the top level with his jaw set tightly. "Hail them."

"...Captain?" Sulu quickly reported, "Somebody just opened the landing bay..."

"What!" Kirk snapped, then seemed to know what the answer was already; he yelled, "Report!" as Chekov stirred over his screen.

"I think it's her—But I lost it..."

"THERE!" Sulu was shouting, pointing so far across the distance on the screen as if the small vessel was a barely traceable insect of a shape. But Kirk didn't need the buzzing red alarms and another rough knock to the ship to realize he really didn't have time to deal with anything else.

"Uhura—"

And then as soon as Sulu picked it up he was practically roaring the interruption: "_Captain, their engines are half gone_."

Kirk's total shock, along with the stunned reactions around the bridge, only took over for a second before he commanded with a practically gleeful edge, "Take them out!"

It only took a couple torpedoes to make the other vessel incapacitated, and when a relieved sigh began to pass over the crew members, Kirk just took a stunned lean into the back of the captain's chair before turning and loudly saying, "What do you think, Mr. Spock? Can we keep her?"

The slight peel of laughter was interrupted by Chekov's look of seriousness as he turned around in his chair. "Sir, the smaller wessel's readings indicate it is damaged, but I cannot get specific data..."

Jim's face fell a bit just before Spock turned to quickly confirm, "I am still picking up life signs, but her heart rate indicates loss of blood..."

After Jim sternly ordered Scotty to tractor-beam the Viper back and alerted McCoy, he managed to sigh after he and Uhura shared a look of astonishment. "If she got hit in that tiny thing, she is damn lucky to be alive."

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Hours later, the pilot drowsily came to in an enclosed sick bay bed, blinking and immediately groaning at the damage her senses could assess on her entire body. With her knowledge of the medical technology on board, it was easy to assume that before she'd been treated it was probably far worse. With some grim wonder over that, she demanded details from the nearest nurse who hadn't yet even realized she was awake.

As soon as word reached a couple other people that she was revived, Jim was eagerly coming in to see her, smirking proudly.

"Hey," he greeted. "_You_ are one hell of a woman, you know that?"

She gave him a tired smile and he reached out to affectionately muss up her already sweat-stained locks. With a mischievous look, she said, "I bet you're dying to know who let me out of the garage..."

"I bet you'll never tell," he returned in knowing annoyance. McCoy came scowling up to both of them, nudging Kirk to the side.

"Congratulations, Miss Thrace," the doctor grumbled, unkindly. "You have all but destroyed your right knee for the _third_ time. I guarantee you if you were back home you'd never walk on it again, so be happy you've only got 36 hours of recovery time ahead of you. And how is your pain?"

Kara noted the familiar but also perplexed look that Kirk gave between her and Bones before she mumbled, "Manageable."

"I'll be right back." The curtain rings whined after his exit and Jim was practically laughing by then.

"What the hell is his frakking problem?" Kara demanded with a look of distaste.

Jim shrugged and said, "He's probably thinking you're gonna be about as much trouble as I am. If he gets back and hits you with a hypospray without asking first it probably means he likes you."

She sighed and her head squirmed against the pillow a little; Kirk got up and pushed it more comfortably under her neck, and she quietly asked, "So how's the damage?"

"To your leg?"

"No," she replied.

He understood, and with a look at her lower body seemed to imply that it should be obvious. "You just barely swerved away from a blast that was big enough to take out a small vessel. It probably sent you in a tailspin...Her nose is completely gone, the body is slightly crushed in like a can, and we had to wrench some of it apart to get you out..."

She closed her eyes against the gloom setting into her, just muttering, "Yeah."

Kirk squeezed her hand for a second, his voice unusally thinned with sympathy. "I'm sorry about your girl."

"Oh, now," she replied with a raising of an eyebrow. "Who says it's a girl?"

Then McCoy swept back through the curtain, expressionless as he wielded pain medicine in one hand and a sedative in the other. Before Kara knew it she was pricked with something that made her mind go fuzzy, scowling over at an amused Kirk until the drug took her under.

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Her eyes clicked open to find sick bay a lot darker than usual. This may have been a courtesy to her, as she was currently the only one in medical; the officers who'd suffered injuries had all been sent away by the end of the day the attack happened. A couple of them had caught her awake to come in and offer her a grateful handshake, and she reflected bitterly that that was the extent of any excitement that had happened while she'd been stuck here. Kirk hadn't had time to chat, but he came in at one point to lend her his PADD, which she mostly found herself too woozy to concentrate on. Because of her isolation and boredom, she was left to her wandering thoughts, which simply couldn't carry on long without creeping into morose reflection.

She lay silent in the dark of the room for a long time, her ears absorbing the noise of a musical hum from afar and latching onto it until it idly dropped off. Maybe twenty or thirty minutes after that, her curtain twitched, then opened. The lamp above her turned on to the dimmest possible level to reveal her hand rested over her mouth underneath a chasmic sadness in her eyes which only faded slowly upon McCoy beginning to go through the records hanging by her bed.

She finally mumbled, "What happened to Danny?"

"He's not the night nurse anymore," Bones replied absently, then cast her a direct look for just a second before adding, "He gets into trouble."

A noise rose from Kara that might've been a scoff if she'd had the energy. Her look of desolation hadn't wiped completely from her features, and he was making no pretense about whether he'd noticed.

McCoy sighed, tucking his notes underneath his arm. "Is there anything I can do besides pretend to buy that you just need another dose of painkillers?"

She looked directly at the ceiling, eventually answering, "Yeah, actually. You can talk to Kirk for me."

"...Yeah?" Bones slowly took a seat in the chair next to her bed.

"You need to convince him that he can't help me." Kara shook her head slowly. "He can't fix this. I'm stuck here...Accept that you all can't explain this and move on."

With a quiet grimace Bones replied, "He's gonna hate it."

"Yeah, he's spoiled like that."

Bones smiled quite heartily. "With what? Luck? That's just Jim. He might consider himself lucky he can keep you around, though."

Kara kind of cringed. After a moment she switched to asking, "What was that stupid song?"

He blinked, passively said, "Well, sorry, I thought you were out like a light. It's, uh, 'Moonshiner.' Something my grandfather used to play on the harmonica. Very old folk tune, like that sailors used to sing, you know like—" He halfheartedly pantomimes a motion like somebody swinging a bottle back and forth in rhythmic mirth, but then stops dismissively. "Well, maybe you don't know."

"Yes, we had sailors," she said with an eye roll and also a smile. "You make it sound sad, though."

"Well, there's more than one version. Here, I'm gonna check your leg..." He stood up and she knew the drill now, already lifting up to flex her knee in and out while he was at it with the tricorder. He didn't miss the suppressed wincing when she first moved it. "Dammit, girl, you're supposed to tell somebody if you're in pain."

As he fumbled to find the right hypospray, she sighed in mild annoyance.

"This looks good, though. You should be fine to go early tomorrow. Also, I'm giving you a protein supplement, since you're still about as undernourished as you were when we found you."

Shortly after he dosed her gently to the neck, two sets of footsteps came marching in. Bones widely opened the curtain to see Spock and Kirk, both apparently taking duty, and sighed. "I guess it's a good thing I'm not in my pajamas?"

"We need you," Kirk routinely informed. "Bridge just reported a vessel they identified as—what was it?"

Spock supplied, "A DY-100 class starship."

"What?" Bones replied blankly.

"That means it's early twenty-first century, at the latest," Kirk explained. "Also, there are people on board...We're getting no life signs except for heartbeats. No breathing, but they're definitely alive."

Before getting up McCoy had to cast a look at Kara, who was looking between all three of them in drowsy befuddlement. He sarcastically mumbled, "Can't wait to see _this_..." before stretching up to leave.

As they sifted out of medical bay, her tiredly quiet "Be careful, boys" was only heard by Kirk, who merely turned an affectionate smirk before he headed out.

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"Where am I?"

"You're in bed," Bones growled slowly, "holding a knife, at your doctor's_ throat_."

Hovering still over the man who had just been pretending to be asleep before snatching him by the collar and pressing one of the shiny brand new scalpels to his Adam's apple, Bones felt considerably more angry than afraid. Cause what a shit way to buy the farm. And he wondered about Thrace, then worried about Thrace, and focused probably in vain on not bringing the man's attention to the possibility that someone was sleeping in the enclosed bed next door.

"...Are we alone?"

Well God dammit. "No. But you clearly don't know a quick way to kill a man, and I'll be damned if she isn't gonna make it out of here before I'm done bleeding on your shirt."

The corners of the man's mouth twitched slyly; then a violent pluck of light shot into the side of his head, and he thunked slack against the headboard.

Bones looked up, agape, and saw Kara standing between him and his office. Wielding his phaser.

Wide-eyed, he bent back down to feel for a pulse, then in a moment nearly shrieked, "What the HELL?"

"What?" She shrugged, looking only a bit jolted. "I was looking for something to read and—"

"He's dead!" Bones roared. "There are only four settings, how hard can it be?"

Kara gestured with the phaser under a look of matching irritation. "He was about to cut your throat, okay, I wasn't gonna stop to read the owner's manual!"

"Woah, okay, who was what?" Kirk had picked a good time to wander into medical, and now he stopped at the sight of Kara holding the phaser, eyes widening when he looked at the body lying next to McCoy.

"She just killed him," McCoy provided bluntly.

Kirk let out a sigh, followed by a scolding whine of just, "Starbuck..."

Then he turned to march off, presumably to record one of the more euphemizing captain's logs of his career.


	3. Chapter 3

Upon being released from sick bay by a doctor who seemed quite happy to be rid of her, Kara had returned to her sleeping area to find a pile of clothes Jim had acquired for her so that she wouldn't be living in her old fleet tanks all the time. Her hands had paused at the bottom of the pile where what was left of her old jock smock had been respectfully folded, breathing a numbed sigh as she stuck her finger along one of the gashes they'd had to make to get her out of it. Leafing then through what she thought was a somewhat overcomplicated pair of jeans and a couple soft t-shirts, she went for putting on sweatpants and shook off her restlessness with a jog around the residence halls where they were pretty low-traffic in the afternoon. The change of clothes did nothing for how much she stood out among the crew. She didn't have a uniform, and though it was probably out of earnest curiosity that she seemed constantly noticed, she still felt like a bit of a spectacle. She was grateful that despite the occasional joking salute, which she was happy to return if she was in the right mood, everyone she wasn't acquainted with basically kept their distance.

Evenings in the rec room were the only time she really forgot being an outsider. She was fully aware that some higher-ranking members of the crew didn't know what to make of her, but she had enough of a level of easy trust with the captain so that people seemed to just cock their eyebrows and go with it. The failure to teach everyone Triad had segued into Kirk breaking out his own deck to teach her poker, which she caught onto pretty fast. Because she still couldn't beat Spock, she merely got satisfaction from the fact that he always wanted to be doing something more constructive instead. For some reason she didn't think she'd ever really grasp, Jim loved the game more when Spock was playing and was usually very insistent that his first officer join in, and she'd gotten used to that by now.

After McCoy folded he took a sip of his beer and asked, "You guys wanna take a break?"

Kirk concurred, "Yeah, I gotta pee." They stood up and left together. Kara remained at the table with Spock sitting quietly on her left.

She refused to just sit there in silence with him; with a resigned motion of her shoulders, she smiled dryly at the science officer, who replied with an obligatory, "Mrs. Thrace. I trust you are adjusting favorably."

"Oh, what does that even mean?" she muttered, pausing to eavesdrop on the table next to them, becoming bored with that. "Can I ask you something?"

Spock looked more directly at her before looking back down with an appearance of near-shyness. "You wish to know the extent of my findings in relation to the wormhole..."

"No." She shook her head. "Actually. I was wondering how many of your people survived."

Spock did not even flinch, but his look at her was a bit more reading before he said, "The last calculation of the Vulcan population was 10, 307."

Her eyes quietly widened for only a second, as if she'd wanted to be able to say, _Trust me, that's a good number_. She swalled roughly. "And, um. You're not with them?"

He stated simply, "The _Enterprise_ is my home now."

"Yeah..." Kara's thoughts trailed into something else, and she was mutely surprised when Spock volunteered to speak.

"I did not find anything of substance from the conditions of the anomaly where we first came across your vessel, but any logical projection of the circumstances leads me to believe that it would be impossible to send you back to your place and time, even if the—"

"Hold on, hold on. Wait," Kara interrupted, unprepared, putting a hand up. "Place and _time_?"

"Affirmative. The star charts and data you provided me with from the Viper, your accounts of the limited amounts of life within your universe all indicate—"

"Don't. Don't even...Come on, _time travel_? This is bullshit."

"Lieutenant Uhura even informed me that your religion prescribes perfectly with that of certain archaic Terran faiths," Spock explained patiently. "This crew has already seen firsthand evidence of time travel and I do not find it improbable that we would encounter it again. I was told to find the most logical answer to your situation and my conclusion is that your origin is in fact the past. We have solved the occasional sift in space, but not time, not with essentially no measure of temporal difference. You have as little chance of returning to where you came from as I do." And some day, when Kirk explained it all to her, she'd understand the double meaning of that last part.

Kara took an unneeded glance at her cards, set them back face down, reached to sneak a swig of McCoy's beer. Then she looked back at Spock. "While we're alone, I guess I have something else to say..."

Spock was attentive, patient through her hesitance.

"Um. Okay...What would be your _scientific_ opinion if I was to suggest that...I'm actually dead...back home."

Spock narrowed both of his eyebrows, and replied with a rather uncharacteristic hesitation, "You must clarify."

"Like if it seems like I died, just before I got here..." She checked the door. "I can't believe I'm...Look, can you keep a secret?" Her voice was wrought with the sense of how ridiculous it was to ask that of Spock.

"I certainly can if the information is not of an urgent nature."

She nodded and tried, awkwardly but quickly, to get it out in the air. "So, we know that I came out of a wormhole, but...What if this accident that led me here wasn't with something that even looked like a wormhole at all?"

"Just because you did not perceive—"

"No, listen. What if it was actually a really..._really_ bad windstorm, just above a gas giant." Her arms dropped in limp uncertainty from her gesturing explanations, and she breathed in a couple nervous breaths and took a moment. "I mean like pressure strong enough to totally crush a vessel in seconds. And I mean...it's all really hazy, but I...I kinda feel like it did."

"Thrace," Spock interrupted, his tone measured. "There was no damage to your Viper when we—"

"I know. There was no damage to me either, apparently."

"If you are in fact suggesting that you were split into two entities..."

She shook her head, darkly bemused. "I don't_ know_ what I'm suggesting, Spock—"

He stubbornly interrupted, "Impossible. At the least extremely improbable. If your experience with the wormhole caused you any shock or trauma, your memories of the experience would understandably be subject to some distortion."

"Of course," Kara said bitterly. "You mind telling me why my mind would just fabricate some reason that I'm not meant to be alive?"

"Your experience here, in an unfamiliar environment, is greatly troubling for you. You are responding with some kind of dissociative invention of the circumstances so as to distance yourself from the present."

Kara's teeth clenched together. She closed her eyes for a sigh; she wasn't hostile when she asked, "Is there any chance you can try to appreciate the fact that sometimes, to me, _this_ feels like the hallucination..." She gestured to their entire surroundings. "And you can't see that because you've never even seen where I've been?"

For a beat, it seemed like Spock was going to ignore the question. It was apparent that he had simply been further ruminating when he simply replied, "Yes. Of course, there is another explanation for your psychoses that is perhaps more straightforward, if you would hear it."

She shook her head almost apathetically. "What?"

He replied with a question. "Have you ever entertained suicidal tendencies?"

Her hands tucked down and just squeezed the edge of the table, hard. She was like that when Kirk came up beside her; he could immediately sense something heavy had been touched upon, but he and Spock managed to convey an entire conversation about it (_Yes, we just talked and yes, I would like to tell you but no, I will not_) with a few looks.

The two moved on to discussing a mission they would be taking care of tomorrow. Just as McCoy set down a fresh drink he'd just gotten, he casually pointed at Kara and said, "She's going. She could use some air."

Kirk blinked at her. "Oh, that's right, you haven't been planetside..."

"In a long time," she finished a bit matter-of-factly, her eyes downturned. Then she muttered, "Are you gents all sure I won't just get in the way?"

Her tone didn't exactly suggest that she wouldn't argue her way into going anyway, and Kirk smiled. "It's mostly a routine diplomatic thing. You'll be able to look around while we most likely attend a boring meeting and then grab some unreplicated food afterwards."

It wasn't like she was expecting anything other than a simply and beautifully green, populated, oxygenated planet. But the next day consisted of quite constantly gulping down how very overwhelmed she was, from her unsettling first transporter experience to really being in the midst of a thriving environment. Within the first few minutes of hiking through the farm-like fields to the small town close by Kirk was griping about being bitten by bugs, and she could only relish those annoyances, the small evidence of teeming, abundant life tickling against her skin.

"Hey guys, if you don't mind, I think I'll just hang out here while you're doing your...thing." Kara stopped with her hands in her pockets, looking off into the yellowy horizon. When they all hesitated to respond, she turned and reassured, "What? I'll stay right here. Just remember the tree."

Jim shrugged and said, "Okay. You've got a communicator in your bag, right?"

"Scotty babbled something about 'Federation property' and breaking protocol and then he gave me one, yeah." Kara was already shrugging off the little backpack she'd brought down and crouching down against a thickly veined tree trunk to get into it, and the three men left her to herself.

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When the talks went by a little more smoothly than expected, Jim and McCoy were in a good mood and decided to visit the pub-like establishment just down the street. Just as Spock was in the middle of asking Kirk something, Bones flicked a look to the side, hearing just faintly a couple bold clacks off in the distance.

When he noticed the lack of surprise on Jim's face, he scowled. "What is she doing?"

Jim shrugged.

"You let her bring her gun?"

"It's hunting season here, nobody's gonna come running," Jim explained with a kind of reserved understanding as Bones started walking off toward the fields. "Come on, let her be..."

"I'm just gonna see if she wants to come get a drink," Bones shouted behind him.

The occasional sound of gunshots—usually only two or three with pauses of a few minutes in between—were increasingly louder until he was close enough to hear the tinny little explosions that accompanied them farther in the distance.

He was slowing up right over her shoulder when she snapped into aim and let a short round off, the bullet smashing some blue aluminum canister she'd set on a big rock some dozen yards away. She turned swiftly to crouch down, not overtly reacting to him.

"Can't say this is how I would've expected you to spend your time down here," Bones commented lightly, leaning his back into the tree. At his feet she was reaching into a small compartment, looking like she was double-checking something, then finally thinking to give an indifferent shrug in reply.

She stood back up, squinting off at the rock where she had two of the cans left. She stiffened and aimed again, muttering "three," taking out the last two. Then she lowered her arm, loosening down a bit, but pensively pressing her lips together.

She seemed to remember he was there after a moment, then flatly explained, "I'm on the last round of my last magazine. I'll probably never be able to shoot this gun again."

Bones furrowed his brow, taking in the kind of nervous smile on her face, the kind she had sometimes that looked nearly frantic if you looked close enough.

He was a bit taken aback when she shifted towards him and held the gun out by the barrel. "You do it."

Even as he took it, his expression was unsure. "I don't...I mean, what do I even shoot at? You gonna kill me or something if I miss?"

She scoffed. "Doesn't matter, just shoot it. I'm assuming you know_ how_."

He rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I know how...Why don't you close your eyes or something."

She seemed confused before she sort of got what he was doing. She put her hands over her eyes and waited till her ears swelled to the sound of that final bullet tearing out, booming its swan song, hitting whatever target she wanted it to be. She took her hands back down, and after a pause, just let out an uneasy laugh at herself.

After she tossed an unneeded canister out of her bag with a shrug, he acted out of reflex and leaned down to pick up and throw it over his shoulder.

Kara argued, "I can—"

"So can I."

They walked a little ways before she kind of laughed at that. "Seems like you act more like a doctor's supposed to act when they get you away from sick bay..."

"You mean like, nice?" McCoy chuckled. "...Come on, I'm alright."

"I hate that bedside manner bullshit anyway," she muttered. "And you're not as bad as my last doctor, he was a real son of a bitch."

"Well, I'm glad I'm not so bad. Compared to a real son of a bitch."

One side of her mouth smirked, like no way in hell would she ever give him a real compliment cause it would ruin all the fun. "You're welcome."

She made fun of him for whistling "When the Ship Comes In" all the way to the pub. There she looked around with half-shy fascination at the crowds, several of whom were of a bizarre and strange-looking species to her. They stuck around a little longer than they should have and Kara drank a little more than she should have, and ended up whipping a threatening remark at a traveler who was actually offering to help carry their next round of drinks, perhaps partly out of being alarmed by the broad grimacing shape of the Denobulan smile. When she got a little too animated against his flustered response Kirk had to intercept and stiffly say, "Please go outside and ask Scotty to beam you up." Spock opted to join her, leaving him and Bones finishing their ales at the shoddy wooden table.

"She's trouble," Bones said after a heavy tired silence.

Kirk winced a bit. "It's tough with her, you know...I'd probably get sick of her attitude pretty fast if she was an actual officer, she's completely undisciplined, and God knows she's about as fucking paranoid as the worst Romulans we've ever run into. But with what she's been through, I'm surprised she even trusts us."

"Yeah, I know all that. I don't even mean it like that." Bones was apparently not pressed to explain how he did mean it; he stood up and finished off his drink, leaving his friend looking mildly befuddled as he took both their glasses up to the bar.

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The extent of Kara's relationship with Pavel Chekov was based solely on food recommendations. Starting with the day she'd been desperate for something comparable to her favorite packaged snack mix but had had no idea what they'd call it, he always seemed like the nicest guy in the mess hall to flag down so that she didn't feel like growling at the replicator that she just wanted something chewy.

One morning he'd recommended red licorice, insisting as always that it was invented in his mother country, which had to be some ongoing prank she affectionately allowed him to have at her. She'd been stopping for some small talk with Kirk with the candy hanging out of her mouth, and hell if she'd ever remember what happened to the licorice after the chaos stormed into view.

She had to assume it was a very sudden emergency, since Kirk didn't even know what was going on: it started with a nurse running by them and into the transporter room pushing a biobed. They heard the tingling sound of bodies beaming in, immediately conjoining into a tumult of undefinable noise. Kara was about to get a look in when Kirk pulled her back closer to the wall, seeing the bed being pushed rapidly out. The collected bodies pushing past were the patient and two nurses: a moaning, asking of questions, confirming readings, and Bones behind them barking out orders. When they passed by Kirk yelled out, "Bones?" in a way that seemed like shorthand for 'Anything I can do?'

In equally sparse response, the doctor barely looked at Kirk before shouting, "Code 39-'B' refugee, fleeing advisable."

And then Kirk was already on the comm ordering Sulu to take them away at a moderate warp speed, and after the rush had so suddenly dissipated that the corridor seemed more quiet than before, Kara's mouth dropped open without a noise before she managed, "Uh. Was that...a blue woman...in labor?"

Kirk gave a brisk nod. "And it's gonna be a tough time, too, half the medical crew's on leave during repairs—oh, dammit, even Chapel—Sulu, belay that, we need to get some of our—"

"Oh, shit..." Kara leaned down to the floor, noticing one of the wireless scanners she recognized as belonging to the medical tricorders. "Did they drop this?"

Kirk had been about to head up to the bridge, and he cast a look down the opposite way and grimaced slightly, then said, "You better chase 'em. Hurry."

They had already gotten the woman set up in medical by the time she got there, and Kara could tell upon arriving that the situation could probably wrack Vulcan nerves from the particular way Bones was making demands, cursing their shortages; she never imagined they could ever be very under-prepared, but this was obviously some completely unpredictable situation. It couldn't be every day that Bones went to a planet for a seminar and came back with a woman who apparently couldn't get medical assistance anywhere else.

As she came up behind McCoy he was asking Nurse Lang, the one currently occupied trying to look up xenobiology data, if she knew of anyone on the ship who was experienced delivering a baby of this species, and sure enough also digging through his pockets, interrupting himself with, "Dammit, dammit, _dammit_, where's my—"

"Doc!" Kara held out his scanner and he immediately looked and snatched it. And just when she figured she'd be getting out of his way, he reached down under the biobed and took out a large plastic bucket and shoved it out for her to take.

"Water. Warm, not cold."

As she was at the faucet she saw Chapel storming in still in civilian clothes and working on some rubber gloves, heard McCoy's grateful outburst of "THANK GOD. DO YOU KNOW IF—"

"Yes, I delivered a Maklin my fourth year in Washington. Does she know any Standard?..."

As Christine Chapel took over where Bones was more hesitant, the head nurse's presence somehow smoothed things along by the edge of a blade, quietly but confidently. She turned and soaked a rag in the water as soon as Kara took it over, and after merely sizing up the fact of Kara's presence, said, "She's afraid. Hold her hand."

Kara let out a scuffing laugh, backing up nervously. "Oh, I'm...I'm not really..."

Her voice could only trail off as it was not only Bones struggling to verbally assure a woman that her baby was going to be okay when she probably couldn't understand a word, but Chapel turning a most impenetrable expression to her and correcting, "You are today."

The woman's hand was sweaty, but soft, very humanoid and vulnerable in Kara's grasp, and even though it did no good to talk she felt that it might mean something to her anyway when paired with the physical comfort; as the tension in those fingers started wringing into her she found herself automatically mumbling things like "It's okay" and "You can do this" without really thinking about it. When Blue finally started really pushing and Chapel's look at the progress turned into good news, a relief very much like open happiness came over McCoy, and Kara found herself smiling too, almost proudly, brushing her free hand through the woman's hair.

The baby, when she saw it more closely as it passed from the doctor's arms into the woman's, was tiny and glazed in a milky blue and...sort of cute. Kara found herself still standing by the bed quite a few minutes after, and the woman, attempting to communicate in her own tongue an offering inquiry, tilted the infant just a little in her direction. Kara speechlessly hesitated until Bones was glancing up from typing out the paperwork on the woman's records and said, "I think she's asking if you'd like to hold him, Kara."

"Oh..." She gave an attempt at a gracious grin but instead awkwardly sidled over closer to Bones, muttering, "I'm not very good with kids."

A few minutes later he explained the situation to her, how she was a member of a nomadic species that held a belief that any child born in the first week of the warmest season was cursed, that the women were shunned and abandoned if they didn't murder their own (he added with a spitting tone that most of them apparently were willing to).

"I thought, um..." Kara scratched at her eyebrow. "Isn't that like a cultural thing? If you interfere with that custom, aren't you sort of breaking the rules?"

"You kidding me?...Yeah, if we tried to monitor the entire society, that's something we just can't do. But on a case-by-case basis—This lady comes up to me in the middle of a crowd, says she knows a woman is in the middle of a tough delivery and her people won't help her, and asks me to do this because she knows I'm a doctor..." He shook his head, muttered quietly, "Even if it was breaking the rules, you think I'd give a damn?"

Maybe she'd just wanted to hear him tell her it was a stupid question, and she couldn't help a slight satisfied smile.

After a second he looked at her suspiciously. "What?"

She scrubbed a hand over her face. "Nothing."

The next afternoon when Bones got back from his lunch, she was standing idly in sick bay, leaning against the wall next to his office. He only raised his eyebrow for a second before reaching for a bin containing used vaccine cartridges and handing it to her.

"Sort those out by color; check every one to see if it's cracked, if it is, throw it out. Come and get me when you're done."

He never once thanked her for anything, just told her what to do like it was her job. She wouldn't have wanted it any other way.


	4. Chapter 4

After she'd been around past the point anyone was really keeping track of how long, he still didn't _get _her, not one bit.

For one thing, McCoy had been pretty familiar with the captain before anyone knew he was going to be anyone, but there was a certain way Jim was, and you didn't just lie around in his cabin for a few days and then have him in your grip in _that _way, like you'd been living together for years, like you were the same damn person. What kind of woman, seriously, became _friends _with Jim Kirk with seemingly no inconvenient strings attached when they'd apparently wound up in bed the first night they met, without having to worry about him giving her that _I know what you look like naked_ look instead of a _Hey, you, hi_ look, first thing in the morning, every morning (of the two regards, he had been witness to the former far too many times not to notice and send up a prayer of thanks whenever he was spared from seeing it). The only bickering they got into was practically familial; the mutual respect and fondness was palpable, it was surreal. If he tried to start figuring out which one of them had changed the other, his head might collapse in on itself.

He kind of thought, maybe, that he was starting to like her. But he didn't get her. Not the way she kind of _seduced_ people out of acting like they usually did simply by being around, not the way someone could easily mention some perfectly benign topic that would make her look so inexplicably sad-looking even when she tried to hide it all the time. Not how she kept falling asleep in her chair in medical bay and waking up in gasping jolts, dreaming she was dead, offering her muted explanations. _I was all crushed and crash-landed, I was burnt to a crisp—I'm sorry I fell asleep. Think I'll go grab some toast and coffee._

His mind just grumbled over these...lists about her. Mouths off like a sailor at the drop of a hat and then in the evening lets her hair out of the little ponytail and smoothes it down, puts on something that isn't quite a dress and shows up all 'Didn't you know, I can be heartbreakingly pretty' to play cards and then proceeds, within an hour, to boredly announce that she is going to her room to change again because she wants to go to the gym and "Kirk, come and spot me."

Something about her, everyone knew, was kind of effortlessly larger than life; larger than their lives, at least. He knew that back at headquarters their story was getting its share of cynicism, but nobody who met her disbelieved her, not in the sharp way she carried herself as a lone fleck of something bigger, with her own inscrutable dish of diaspora in those cutting eyes. After the stories about the previous day's mission were over in the upper ranks' rec room, she'd spill often and repeatedly if asked, about the time she broke the barrel roll record in cadet school, the time she got marooned and had to hijack an enemy vessel that was—Christ—an _organism_, and occasionally, if she was in a particularly good mood, the stuff about these "cylons" Sulu was always curious to hear despite the fact that she couldn't explain how any of it worked. Even this she would speak about in quipped tones of long-gone history, like it wasn't a real story, like it couldn't be about herself.

Thing was, even her mistakes were something else, sometimes. After that day she'd recklessly offed that patient whom Bones was bound by his job to assume had just been exceptionally prone to his own considerations of self-defense, Jim had shown him the report embedded in a message from the Vulcan colony that was all about Khan Noonien Singh. They'd agreed that even though it should have been handled differently, the man sounded like a damn nightmare and it was a bit unsettling that a total tyrant might've been running free around their ship because they hadn't known better at the time. Kirk had added, in a low afterthought, not to mention to Starbuck that she may have actually saved some people's asses in the long run.

None of this was really what he cared about. Because he was certain that on top of the heroics they'd seen enough of—the tendency to weasel her way out of trouble that was all too reminiscent of the captain himself, the woman who stood and walked and talked and aimed and islept/i like a soldier—there were some very small, simple things about her, and when he really thought about it those were the things he didn't know. He didn't know what kind of family she grew up with and if they'd been alive, couldn't imagine what kind of house she'd lived in, or why she chose to enlist, or if she'd ever regretted it and why. Or what the stories were with the _tattoos_, the shapes and lines in rich black which he'd seen enough times to have memorized just like Jim's scars, or the freckle in Spock's left eye, or the fingernail that Chapel chewed on the most. The one on her shoulderblade that was always half-hidden, it looked kind of like a stairway, and the question had been halfway out of his mouth a couple times before he'd stopped himself. He'd always hated tattoos anyway.

He knew that even with Jim it was the same; neither of them got many of the facts. She'd been here for months now, and nobody knew even one name of a single soul of the ones she'd known before.

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"Shit—that's gonna hurt my wrist, Starbuck."

Kara came out of her double left hook with a sneer. "I told you to fasten the mitts."

"I did," Kirk protested, giving her a backhand to jab at with her other hand. "One of 'em's too worn out to fasten right. These are old."

"I could tell," she muttered from her straightly focused expression, bouncing forward and delivering a combo that forced Jim back a couple steps.

From the wall of the gymnasium where McCoy was watching while going through some messages, he remarked, "Allow me to confess a measure of gratitude that we don't even have two pairs of gloves."

Kara laughed, not looking aside from her concentration. "See? I figured boxing would be around for as long as there are doctors to grumble on the sidelines."

"It's not just the sport. It's you two," Bones said warily. "Ey, Jim, what's the deal with the messaging? Are we stopping tomorrow to figure that out?"

"No, Linus IV is called off cause Chekov and Uhura both think it's just that one outpost. Basically there's a problem back there, or we don't know what's wrong." Jim sounded like it was probably the fifth time he'd said it today. "You should ask him about it if you see him. Oh, and ask him how his little project's going."

"The...what?"

"Just ask."

"You know, Captain," Kara interrupted with a sigh. "I'm still waiting for you to realize that the frequencies are being jammed somewhere."

"Jammed?" Kirk replied cynically, nearly laughing. "By _who_?"

"Klingons?"

Kirk rolled his eyes.

"Come on, you've had run-in after run-in with those bastards." Kara shook her head. "You're practically at war just by coming into contact with them."

"That doesn't mean they have a vendetta against Starfleet," Kirk argued with little patience. "It's a violent culture. We may not like it, but we can cooperate with it."

"Peaceful cooperation and tolerance..." Starbuck muttered bitterly, "Is that what you told Spock after his planet was destroyed?"

They both paused in their movements; Kirk's look said,_ That's not fair_. "No. Not exactly."

"I'm outta here." Bones stood up and stretched his arms a little, and his sudden interjection managed to loosen the tension in the room. "Night, you two. And remember, if I catch _either_ of you with so much as a _nosebleed_..."

"Yeah, yeah," Jim pacified as the doctor gave his final disapproving glance and left the gym. Kara had gone back to being intently focused on her stance after Jim solidified his again, but a small look of amusement had bent into her features as Bones left.

He took her hooks in a comfortable silence for a couple minutes, finally bringing it up with an air of mischief but also of simple companionship: "He likes you."

"Who?" she raised an eyebrow without looking at him.

He didn't move from his stance, watching her practiced, instinctive bouncing. "You know damn well who."

"Just drop it, Kirk."

And well, he'd had a hunch, but only a hunch, and his capacity to read Kara was hardly as well-honed as his experience with Bones. So he shrugged, and dropped it. "Fine, okay, he's not your type."

She let out one stern jab, and her eyes were widening in a jolt of aggravation. She stepped back and stood still, sighing deeply with her lips moving stiffly. Then she just spat, "'Not my type'? I mean, what the hell? We're talking about Leonard frakking McCoy here."

After a second Jim was smiling beside himself. "So?"

She scoffed, speaking bluntly. "_Bones_? I can't believe you'd even...He's—the _best kind _of ordinary, he's supposed to find some blue-eyed young thing, and...you know, _kids_ and a white house with a wrap-around porch and the tire swing and all—"

"—You don't know what you're_ talking_ about." Jim was still smirking at Kara's animation, but he wasn't without his compassion, and he was figuring her out. "You don't think he's got his own baggage? Cause in case you haven't figured it out, he already tried that whole thing, and it didn't work out so well for him."

She had a different kind of cringing smirk. "...That ring?"

"I guess he wouldn't have told you about the divorce," Kirk sighed. "He's never actually given me the whole story."

"That ugly, huh?" She shook her head and went back into stance, giving him a nodding urge to put his mitts back up. "Does he have a knack for picking the wrong women or is he just stupid?"

"Don't talk like that. Besides..." He resumed his half-hearted concentration on her punching. "Trust me, you are _nothing_ like his ex-wife, and that can't be a bad thing. I mean, he knows he's done having kids, he's happy with Joanna—"

She backed up again, fists dropping, and Kirk's look was immediately repentant and shocked as she demanded, "He has a_ kid_?...Oh, it just keeps getting better."

"He seriously didn't mention to you he had a daughter? Ever?" She shrugged at him, shook her head, and rapidly went back into her punches before he was fully prepared. Jim was still processing it with surprise, like he was more thoroughly realizing something about Bones. "I guess he thought you might find that intimidating."

"Get—_higher_, Kirk," Kara commanded. "You're not getting my uppercuts right."

He rolled his eyes and considered just letting it go again, let her have at it in silence for a few moments more. But a fragile edge of something had obviously been frayed at, and Jim wondered and worried at it in his head in a way he could never quite resist with people. For the most part he had a level of tact when there were particularly sensitive issues at stake, but just every once in a while, like on some occasions with Spock, he would see something in somebody that had never seen the light of day and it was almost like his explorer's instinct took over. When he saw somebody like Kara Thrace with something just _itching _to get out, he just couldn't help it, and sometimes he would _push_...

"I think you should see if he'd talk to you about the divorce," he said.

It earned him some more aggressive hits, but she was steaming up, yes, yes she was. "What, because you're curious about it?"

"Yeah, and I'm curious to know if he'd tell you."

"And why the_ frak_ would he tell _me_?" She was focusing intently on the punching mitts as if she didn't trust what she'd do if she actually looked at Kirk, and he could tell she'd just decided she wasn't gonna say anything else to him after that.

"You know what? I think you're chickenshit." He somewhat demonstrated his decisiveness by putting his arms down and beginning to take off the mitts; practice over.

She just ignored it, turning her back on him and starting to rip at the left hook-and-loop with her teeth, but her figure sighed down into a tense motionlessness as he kept talking.

"Starbuck doesn't have the guts." Kirk went on, smiling almost childishly. It was down to his own self-amusement now. Her silence was almost murderous. "What if I dare you? No...I double _dog_ dare—"

And he lost the chance to witness it as her back was turned, the moment when a white-hot bitter pain flared just so quickly in her eyes before she backed and whipped around, because his entire skull was thrown sideways by her glove botching squarely up across his cheekbone in her suddenly rootless acerbity; and in his instinctive rage against such a jarringly untoward offense, he fell into a younger version of himself that responded doggedly to the rough sport and let his naked fist fly in one smacking punch to her face, sending her reeling just a couple steps back.

Chekov's voice came over the comm, announcing a departure time, and clicked out. They both breathed, heavily, two or three or four breaths; when Kara was done with the automatic nursing over her nose, she leaned and placed her hands on her knees, looking over at Kirk in a simple bewilderment. His hand was over his mouth, his eyes horrified.

"Good God...I'm sorry," Kirk groaned.

"Whatever. I deserved that, I guess. What the hell even just happened?" She squinted.

"Bones is gonna fucking kill me," Kirk was realizing. He looked, she acknowledged, quite genuinely afraid for his livelihood. "Bones is going to kill me. I—fuck—_Jesus_, I've never hit a _woman _before..."

"Oh, gods, don't start," she complained. "I..." She stopped, and unexpectedly started laughing somewhat crazily. "I...man, my nose is bleeding."

She found a towel she'd brought and put it up to her nose, while Kirk was hit with the reality of that and couldn't help it, and they were both laughing, practically keeling over with it even though it was a delicate and precarious kind of humor.

"Oh my gods, it won't stop."

"Come on." Kirk waved her towards him and put an arm around her, leading her out of the gymnasium. It was when they were on the turbolift that he had his arms crossed in quiet thought, eventually slowly saying, "I guess this is the wrong time to realize that I probably should have asked you if you had...a man, you know, back home."

"Yeah," she agreed bluntly. "Pretty shitty timing there."

He didn't bother saying anything else about it, but her voice very hesitantly cracked up to add, "I guess I'm happy you didn't ask cause I'm not really sure what I would've said." He gave that a curious but patient lack of response. "And by that I mean...if I'd said yes...I may not have been completely sure who exactly I was talking about."

Kirk let out a long breath; he scratched at the back of his neck and remarked, "Life is so fucking complicated." She rolled her eyes.

Kara had assumed they were just headed to Kirk's quarters, so she was surprised when he stopped to press a button at the door of some other cabin. Without waiting for any inquiry, he said over the private comm, "Hey, it's Jim." The door slid open and Spock appeared, looking somehow odd to Kara in something that looked like casual apparel with some dental floss strung between his fingers.

The science officer promptly took in the appearance of Kara holding the towel to her nose, and his eyebrow went up, knowingly. "I suspect you wish to use my regenerator."

"Anything to avoid the wrath of Bones," Kirk confirmed with a sheepish shrug.

Spock turned back into his room and Jim followed, Kara coming in more slowly. Spock was already getting into a small vinyl container she presumed was something like a travel first aid kit, producing a dermal regenerator that looked a bit less advanced than what McCoy would've used.

"I remind you that this is only for superficial wounds," Spock sighed even as he gestured Kara to sit on his bed.

"Look, as long as you can get her nose to stop bleeding..."

"We shall have to see if it is effective in repairing blood vessels."

"How come you don't have one of these?" Kara asked Jim as Spock pulled up a chair next to the bed.

"You need to be licensed to use them," Jim explained, "but Vulcan laws are different. Even Spock will bend the rules to avoid a visit with Bones, anyway."

Spock was offering to take the towel, tilting up Kara's chin as she asked, "You guys really don't like each other, huh?"

"Miss Thrace..." Spock's voice had a tint of matter-of-factness. "I am quite amiable with the crew. I cannot place how you would have any other impression."

Trying not to smirk, Kara's eyes shifted over to Kirk with a look that asked if Spock was actually being _sarcastic_. She simply got a humored smile in response.

Only a moment later, Spock just launched right in. "Considering your avoidance of McCoy, the apparent circumstances of Thrace's injury, and the minor contusion on your face...May I ask what provoked the outburst, Jim?"

Kara's eyes watched Kirk just clear his throat and dig his hands into the pockets of his sweats. The captain lifted his brows and announced, "I'm gonna get a drink of water" before passing by the foot of the bed to Spock's kitchen section.

Kara finally volunteered an explanation. "We were just...sparring. In the gym. Got out of hand."

While Spock began repairing the tender parts of her nose and then scanning for the damaged blood vessel, she heard Kirk snigger and say, "Right. 'Out of hand'."

"I said I was sorry."

"...Actually, you didn't," he teased.

"Look, I know, I know," she sighed, detecting a glint of patient disapproval in Spock's eyes, talking to both of them. "I don't need to be told nobody makes rank around here by starting scuffles with the captain."

Spock gave one of his legendary lifts of an eyebrow before she knew his eyes were looking over her shoulder to meet Kirk's, and she was somehow aware before she heard Jim's building reaction of laughter that she'd said something unintentionally funny.

"What?"

"One of these days I'll have to tell you about my not-so-heroic antics that somehow ended up with me being captain," Jim replied with an unusual tone of dry modesty.

Kara's eyed slowly widened. "You two got in a fight?"

"I think that may be...an understatement," Spock briefly lended, seeming a bit hesitant to get on that topic.

"...Shit," Kara exclaimed. "Didn't think you had it in you, Spock."

"Can I just ask?" Kirk interjected to Kara. "What I did to piss you off so bad? I mean...all of a sudden-like?"

Kara sighed, feeling like she had to owe him some kind of explanation. "You just...reminded me of someone. It wasn't even you, just something you said."

Kirk was coming back into her line of vision with a tall glass, shaking his head in bewilderment. "Must've reminded you of somebody who really pissed you off..."

"Jim," Spock interrupted, sportingly perplexed. "Considering the analogy to present company that was just implied, that seems...a brash assumption?"

"Oh, I piss you off all the time and you know it," Kirk insisted affectionately.

Kara was reaching up to feel at her nose now that the bleeding had stopped, and Spock assured her it was probably healed beyond any visible damage. She thanked him and got up after Spock implied that he would enjoy getting to his meditation before retiring to bed.

Having fallen back into their usual comfort, Kirk and Kara walked together through the hallways until it seemed that Jim was walking her to her quarters in the barrack-style section. He said, "You know you can always come and hang out in my room if you feel cramped down here."

"I told you I didn't want special treatment anymore."

"Well, technically you're still a guest anyway. If you wanna be a yeoman, be a yeoman."

"Are you serious? Wear the little red dress and pour your coffee for you?"

Jim shrugged. "You bring the nurses coffee."

"That happened like one time," she winced.

With a look of sneaking sympathy, Jim hesitated a second. "You know...I feel pretty crappy that you kind of need this new start, you need to move on to something else, and I'm not able to give you that. At least not yet."

She shook it off tiredly. "Yeah, well, I'm fully aware of how unqualified I am. My skills are limited to piloting and instructing in piloting and tactics...mostly in piloting. So, you know...drop me a line when you're in a good old-fashioned war, Captain Kirk."

She was talking lightly, but Jim was sorting out his own response with careful sincerity. He finally quietly said, "It's funny, cause when it comes down to it, it's like I see too much of myself in you sometimes. I keep thinking maybe I oughta drop you off into the academy for real training as fast as I can, but...Thing is, they nearly expelled me. I'm worried they'd spit you out like something poisonous."

The admission of that last part had a weight to it that took Kara by surprise, and she looked soberly up at him where she'd been looking down at the floor before.

"The fact of the matter is that I don't think you'd quite fit in on any other ship even if you did graduate from Starfleet. But the best I can do for you now is consider you a medical volunteer, and not kick you off."

She nodded, attempting to extend some gratitude, "Listen...Thanks—"

Kirk kind of waved it off. "We'll talk about what you wanna do when we're actually getting close to Earth, okay?"

She looked like she could have said more, but she shrugged. "Right...Goodnight."

"'Night."

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A little square plastic box lived above the sink where surgery prep was located, in which the same assortment of jewelry tended to be stored for the duration of work shifts again and again, occasionally collecting pendants that got in the way or other things that might fall out of the uniform pockets from those in the lower ranks. The removal and then the retrieval of his ring at the end of the day was a quick motion of clockwork, but on one particular evening he snatched up the silver to realize it was attached to a chain. He lifted it up, recognized the dog tag, put it back and found his own band.

He'd slipped it on as far as the knuckle when his motion hitched to a stop, as if realizing, connecting something.

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McCoy was assured that whatever it was, he didn't want to miss it, as Jim urged him to take a break and come with him to one of the landing bay areas. He witnessed, along with a small crowd of people, the proud babbling of their chief engineer as he removed the drop cloth from something in front of a rather confused Starbuck.

"...What is it?"

"Well, I...still don't know what we'll call 'et, exactly," Scotty stuttered, "but as you can see, she's..."

That was when Kara, eyes narrowed, took a step forward and stood on one of the stools, brushing her hand over one of the occasional patchwork of white segments on the outer layer of the small vessel; the surface was greyed by slight damage, but it was still an easily readable display of her call sign.

"This is...?"

"Right, well, we had to restore your nose completely...yeh can paint it white if yeh like, but..." he shrugged, then focused on the back end. "We were still able to use your old engine compartment, we just modified it with a compact warp core, which should get up to seven or eight-speed, dependin' on—"

"Wait," Kara had her hand up in the air, and her sensitivity, the bracing for disappointment, was burning thickly under her casually surprised airs. "You're telling me this thing will fly like a Viper? This isn't just like a glorified escape pod or some shit like—"

"Aye," Scotty said, as if he'd just been saying as much. "An' a bit better, if I say so myself, a bit more sensitivity in your thrusters for starters. But we would need a...skilled test pilot to take her for a spin, wouldn' we?"

It took Kara a second to fabricate any kind of response; she almost seemed like she'd only heard half of what Scotty was saying. For just a second she nearly looked like she might cry, and then she very quickly managed a playful kind of gratitude, grinning suggestively and then over at Jim who automatically said, "You've got forty minutes."

"So nobody's tried it yet?" She practically leapt up the ladder, already knowing she was going to say something about the smaller seat compartment behind the cockpit which was built pretty closely to Mark II style. "This thing better not be any slower just because it's a two-seater."

"Ah, lady, you insult me," Scotty said sportfully. "For this time I kinda though'...the captain might like to..."

"The captain?" Kara looked over at where Jim and Bones were standing with a teasingly indifferent expression. "To hell with the captain, Scotty, I think I owe you all the blow jobs and Viper rides you could ever want."

Keenser dropped his ratchet. Jim and Sulu simply tried to contain their fits of snickering in response to the combined amusement and total discomfort that had pulled out of Scotty.

"Righ', can we start with the test drive?" he suggested.

A larger crowd was waiting when they docked in forty minutes later, and Jim took the liberty of pushing up the ladder for her and taking her helmet.

"You knew about this?" she demanded of him with a grin.

"Yeah," he admitted. "I didn't want to get your hopes up, if he wasn't able to put it back together, but...I shoulda known, the man is a genius."

When she got to the bottom of the ladder she just giddied up into him and gave him a tight brief hug, and then she was running off to offer Scotty a couple drinks, insistently enough that he finally consented with, "Right, alright, yeh crazy woman," and got led off all hippity-hop with his arm around her shoulders as if they were already drunk off their asses.

McCoy just said, "Wow."

Jim responded with a small laugh. "Whatever, man, she was kidding about the blowjobs. At least...I think she was." Jim blinked as if slightly troubled.

"Oh, she can do what she wants. Even seems like a good reason to have a drink for once," Bones muttered and smiled a little. "I've never seen her look that happy."

"Yeah, me neither."


	5. Chapter 5

"Can' just call it a Viper," Scotty was agreeing as she poured herself a scotch. "Unless we call eht...a Mark Alpha or something like that."

She cringed. "No...Something it might've been called back home, but different...I was thinking 'Firebird'."

The engineer thought it over, blinking. "I quite like that. What, we gonna paint it red or something?"

"...No, we're not gonna paint it red," she muttered.

After the third night they were able to spend testing her systems, Scotty and Kara struck up a comfortable rapport which came to some kind of plateau the night they managed to put a name to the vessel. It was good to see her focused on something, but of course everyone wondered, without saying so, what the point really was. For Scotty it was just an extracurricular project. Nobody asked her what she thought she was preparing for, if it was anything other than a way to feel closer to home.

If you squinted, her moods were the worst when the top officers came back from the big missions. She'd listen to their accounts with sincere amazement, but with a delicate bitterness running under the surface. She became so agitated with boredom that she would use other people's heroic close calls as an excuse to rile things up: One night after a mission had been rocky but successful, Kirk was in a good enough mood about it for Kara to get away with sort of accidentally throwing a party for him after they'd shared more than a couple drinks and gotten some other people in. McCoy wondered if anyone else realized she was celebrating outward to cover up her own issues; he figured Jim kinda did, but it wasn't his way to make much of it.

Bones ended up joining in when, somehow, this had all started taking place in one of the lower level rec rooms with the sinky couches, the one Gaila had taken upon herself to decorate so that it looked homier. She was there, of course, slinging catty mockery which Kara returned at every given chance. He knew it was a show; at her last check-up Gaila had been particularly talkative and willing to spill that she'd been the one to sneak Kara through the landing bay that one time, imparting, "I think she's getting more than used to me, even with the...you know..."

"The green?" he'd offered bluntly.

The insults between the two were at a knock-one-back-repeat pace, getting meaner with every shot and drawing the increasingly weak warnings of "Ladies..." from Jim. The only reason McCoy was at this little party was because of how this was probably more ingenious than they even realized. Bones had figured out long ago that when his professionalism and/or ego didn't get in the way, Kirk was perpetually, almost embarrassingly protective of any and all women he had ever had sex with even once, and this unspoken-of feature of his bizarre kinds of affection being pitted against itself was just about the funniest fucking thing the doctor thought he'd ever seen.

The seat he found himself occupying for a good percentage of the night was a headache of an ugly color, and he watched the disaster that was Kara's unexplainable contagion make the captain act more and more like a moron as the night persisted. Chekov's music chip had some kind of sleazy trumpeting rock stuff going on and people were kind of dancing on their bare feet but not really, the atmosphere shrugging any little movements into affectionate rhythmic contact; Kirk sort of let her out of a pirouette and then got distracted for a moment. Her socked feet slipped out under her on something somebody had spilled as the C.M.O. was approaching back to his seat, and he managed by pure chance to catch her onto his lap as they both fell back onto the couch. When she shifted and her body was threatening to fall off of his knees, he instinctively grabbed her waist.

And he never thought he'd be quite privy to it, the way she'd cling to just whatever when she was drunk, maybe also lonely. Without a hesitation she seemed to be steadying herself by grasping onto all the wrong places before she even realized who he was, letting out a senseless chirp of a laugh. Only then did she look up.

Slowly, her expression sobered and fell. And then fell even more, like she'd forgotten somewhere she was supposed to be. McCoy didn't know what the hell he must look like cause her eyes were turning into something miles away and he kind of wanted to give her some generic consolation like "Hey, it's okay" even though he wouldn't have any idea what the hell he was talking about.

A roaring laugh broke out across the room. Kara flinched, then reacted like she should have a second ago, scoffing through the slight awkwardness.

"Huh-huh," she giggled. "Hi."

"Alright there?" He swiftly and firmly helped her up with a careful grasp on her arms. She walked off like she'd already forgotten and he got up and left.

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Jim came into medical one day to find it pretty quiet except for the sound of McCoy's pointed humming coming from his office. Kara was stretched out with her feet rested on a tabletop, reading from a PADD, most likely the engineering basics she was trying to get a beginner's handle on.

"Hey," she greeted half-attentively just as McCoy came matter-of-factly storming out of his office and up to Kara.

He scolded, "Until you get the gods damned labeling right..."

She snickered. "Did you just say—?"

"Neuro records are_ yellow_," McCoy interrupted. "You—"

"I changed it cause infections are also yellow," she explained calmly.

"Infections go in the other file—"

"The files all look the same."

"Well, of course they look the _same_..."

Jim cocked his eyebrow. "Why don't you just use the, uh—"

"_No_," Bones and Kara interrupted in a unison of annoyance.

A nurse came walking in. Kara leaned back. "Hey, Emilie. Neurology is red now."

The nurse just muttered, "It's about time we changed that" as she finished buttoning up her uniform.

McCoy looked down at Kara, shaking his head with his lips pressed together, and then he walked over to the data screen muttering, "Pain in the ass..."

Jim and Kara exchanged a look of amusement before he finally said, "Well, good news...We're finally hooking back to Earth after all the delays. Should be there in six days, lots of people will get leave if they want it."

"Yeah?" Kara looked like she wasn't sure how she felt about that, almost nervous, but was trying to be casual. "Even you?"

"Well, I gotta debate my case with a few people down at headquarters to keep you under my jurisdiction...No, trust me, I'm persuasive and they should be sympathetic to your position, it'll be a cake walk," he assured her as he saw her concern. "But yeah, I'm gonna...visit Iowa. See my mom, I haven't done that in a while."

"Iowa, huh?" She got a cringe and a nod from Kirk. "What am I gonna do? I'm not going to_ Iowa_."

"Hey, Bones," Jim said with a smirk as the doctor came back by them. "You should take Starbuck down to the east coast with you."

Having already dropped his grumpy demeanor, McCoy just slowly reacted with a chuckle, stopping to lean into the table next to Kara. "Yeah?"

"Why not?" Kara shrugged, realized, "I could meet your daughter."

"You want to meet Joanna," he said dubiously. "I thought you didn't like kids."

"She's not exactly a little girl anymore," Jim put in. "What is she now, ten?"

Bones looked in playful protest at Jim. "Eleven. But she's still my little girl."

"I never said I don't like kids," Kara interjected, almost shyly. In response to his confusion she reminded, "I said I'm not good with them."

"...Okay, yeah, that is what you said." McCoy gave a tilt of his head. "I guess you're kinda like me, then."

"Don't say_ that_. Gods, you're such a _mope_." Kara absently reached a hand to give his forearm a worrying shake as she got back to studying her PADD. The couple seconds of scrutiny gave away that that surprised Bones before he got back to his work. In another moment, Kara realized Jim was still around and put down her reading again. "We need to talk, don't we?"

"Yes," Jim replied in an unsure tone. "See, we keep having these conversations where I feel like it would be pushy to actually ask you if you want to stay here or not, but...I kind of need to know now."

"What do you think?" Kara demanded, considering.

It wasn't exactly a rhetorical question. When she thought about it the most clearly she wasn't completely sure whether she wanted to _go _to Earth or just _see_ it. There was this elusive supposed-to she couldn't define about it, and she didn't know why she cared sometimes, because there were big pretty planets right and left out here, but this one still had a name she'd been running after for years.

"Okay," she sighed. "Suppose I actually go to Earth, what the hell would I actually _do_...?"

Jim shrugged. "Well, we have some great integration programs, mostly for refugees from other planets and things like that...Being unfamiliar with the culture hardly means that you couldn't get an education for whatever you want."

Kara was examining one of her fingernails for a second. "Then there's the other question. What the hell can I even do here. It's not like this candy striper business is really my thing, and..." She lowered her voice. "We both know he's only giving me things to do cause he feels sorry for me."

"I wouldn't put it that way..."

Kirk seemed to be stepping around something she'd just said, and Kara was narrowing her eyes at him when they were interrupted by a voice pitching up from his personal comm.

"Captain?..."

Kirk only had to hear Spock's voice; he blinked, flinched, sighed. "Ah, shit. Sorry, I'll be right there." As he got up he lingered and said, "Tactical meet-up."

She asked without really thinking, "Can I come?"

He narrowed his brows. "Uh..."

"I just wanna watch," she said with a shrug.

She took a chair at the end of the long table in the ready room, studying her PADD while sort of half-listening through a good half hour of Kirk and Spock chewing through several possibilities, finally understanding after a point what kind of mission they were talking about. She curiously leaned forward from her chair to reach for a report that was sitting on Kirk's personal PADD, trying to figure out the meaning of all the graphs they were sketching onto the table's built-in monitors. He had long put it aside and didn't seem to mind; at one point, she and Spock seemed equally surprised when a long bout of thoughtful silence led into Kirk turning to Kara and asking, "What do you think of this?"

She had an immediate question in reply. "How do you know this ship even exists?"

Kirk looked a little impressed, gave a nod as if to say 'Go on.'

"No information about the structural damage or the fuel supply. After an attack they're describing, you'd think they'd need it bad, but there's no information about bargaining because maybe they just want to lead you astray."

"A trap," Kirk said.

"Could be an ambush from those aggressors you never identified several days ago. Could be Klingon trouble. Your plan would be better if you could send somebody on a recon..." Kara crossed her arms, glaring at him suspiciously. She knew what this was, that she was in no place to actually give suggestions. "Do I get an 'A'? Of course you guys have already gone over all this, right? Evaluated the probable risks?"

She couldn't see Spock over her shoulder, but she knew what look he and Kirk were exchanging as Jim shifted into looking a bit uncomfortable. "Look, I think you're right. Having that bird might be an asset later on, but...I can't really let you be a part of any mission yet."

Kara looked for a second like she wanted to demand more of an explanation, but didn't, and the matter was almost dropped before Spock finally spoke up.

"Captain."

"Spock," Jim interrupted, as if the first officer had actually gotten an entire densely worded argument across simply by addressing him. "I don't wanna have this conversation right now."

"You will never want to have this conversation."

"What?" Kara looked back and forth between the two, landing with personal weight on Kirk. "What haven't you been telling me?" she asked impatiently.

The captain sighed heavily, rubbing his forehead into his hand, putting on his best professional indifference and then launching right in.

"It has been...evaluated by Spock...that you are not currently psychologically fit for duty on this ship. At least not in any position you'd want."

There was a gaping, stagnated moment before Kara's mouth was widening in angry awe; she looked straight at Spock, slowly cutting out, "You son of a _bitch_—"

"He hasn't_ told _me why he thinks this," Jim interrupted his assurance with a brief look of intense frustration, like that was a topic he just couldn't touch without dying of curiosity and had to stay far away from. Kara turned a straight look on Spock, which the Vulcan did not have a hard time interpreting.

"I have kept the specifics of what you told me from the captain," he explained.

Kara was already rolling her eyes as if to sarcastically say 'Oh, _thanks_.'

"Which did make it harder to explain my evaluation that you are coping with far too much psychological stress..."

She slowly leaned forward, resting her arms on the table, her expression a bit prodding at Spock. In a threateningly low murmer, she retorted, "Yeah, and you wouldn't know a_ damn_ thing about coping mechanisms."

"_Heeey_," Kirk immediately warned, "that's uncalled for. Spock's opinion isn't the only factor. I have my own scruples about you, and please don't ask me to explain them like you don't even know..."

She just looked at him, demanding.

He sighed, his voice sharply matter-of-fact as he explained, "You have an extreme level of distrust of other species. You drink too much. You sleep too little. I would be _floored_ if you were not experiencing some level of post-traumatic stress. Have I touched on anything that you aren't aware of yet? I know it's been hard for you, I know it's not fucking fair, but I don't know...if you need some kind of help or just need a lot of time, or—"

"Alright, whatever," Kara stood up. "I've heard enough."

"We're not done, Kara," Kirk said after her. She didn't stop, and he snapped, "_Starbuck_."

She slowed, her back still turned to him as she stopped near the door.

"_Turn around_," he barked, in a tone he had never used with her before, a commanding one. She slowly complied, and he glared at her until she stood up straight and actually looked him in the eyes. "There is no way in _hell _I'm gonna let you put on the uniform when you're still acting like a trigger-happy paranoiac. But understand me, okay. I want you. I want you on this ship. And if you want it, you're as good as under my command. And for starters, don't walk away from me while I'm talking to you."

With that self-restraining tilt of her head, it was a half bitter, half real "Yes. Sir."

Kirk just looked at her, for what seemed like a long time. In a quieter but still authoritative demand, he asked, "Do you want this?"

"I..." She licked at her lip, her composure wobbling, overwhelmed. She admitted, "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I mean that I don't know if I belong here," she returned quickly, flatly.

Kirk looked at Spock, who was probably raising his eyebrow, but she couldn't see. Then he cleared his throat. "I...don't know what to say to that."

She knew that was the best he could do when, for him, things didn't just stack and fit into other things; he tended to rearrange them so that they'd go how he wanted. He wanted to know what she wanted, not just what she thought she should do, and it had been way too long since she'd been able to think about things that way.

She sighed. Somewhat exhausting the protocol charade, she quietly asked, "Permission to leave?"

He hesitated, but he seemed tired. "Yeah. Go."

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A smoke ring, round and white, puffed up from Kara's lips where her face was perched back almost facing the ceiling; a pale arc of neck retracted when she looked back down at her feet that were reclined up at the front edge of the open cockpit. She lazily relaxed back against the seat with a bottle of something bitter leaning against one knee.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard the door to the pod bay open. She waited until she heard footsteps approaching right up on her side to turn and see McCoy standing at the bottom of her ladder. She put out the cigar on her boot, did little to acknowledge him as he took a couple steps up and rested his arms on the side of the bird, giving her one of his gentler scowls.

"Computer told you where I was, I'm guessing," Kara mumbled. "Doesn't anybody get any frakking privacy around here?"

"Well, since you asked...There are overrides for things like that..."

"Yeah, but only if you're a member of the crew," she said with a detached bitterness.

"...So that's where my bourbon got to," McCoy mumbled. "I was gonna use that to make a pie, you know."

"Uh-huh," she returned dryly. Almost genuinely apologetic, she eventually added, "I know, I'm a pain in the ass...Maybe you won't even have to deal with it much longer."

He shook his head in a kind of, _Oh, here we go_. "What do you think you're talking about?"

"I'm taking off for Earth. I don't care if I have to go in this thing or hitch onto some other ship...I'm not any use here, so..." She shrugged sourly.

After a second, Bones just let out a low, jeering laugh. "Oh, girl, Christ. Cry me a river while you're at it."

Kara finally turned her constant glance on him with a sudden flare of extreme annoyance.

"You have no idea how much Jim would love to give you something to do around here. But look, he tells you your behavior's unnaceptable for Starfleet and instead of, I don't know, _doing_ something about it, you just hit the sauce and sulk, and I'm assuming later it'll be finding the only person on this ship you haven't _frakked _yet..."

The sudden bite to his remarks made Kara start rising up, holding the bottle of alcohol by the neck as if she wanted to quickly make off with it. As she started invasively placing her feet on the steps in front of him, she reminded, "I haven't_ fucked_ you yet," with a smirk on her face.

"...No." Instead of getting even slightly uncomfortable, McCoy had a look like she'd fallen right into making it too easy. "D'you know why that is?"

Her cynical laugh made her unable to even respond as she tried to make her way farther down the ladder, indifferent to the proximity to his unmoving body. She finally managed, "I suppose this is where you enlighten me, doctor."

"Because you might actually care about me," Bones enunciated. Kara then only pondered the dilemma of being trapped between McCoy's arms rested on the stepladder instead of looking at him, and though she didn't visibly react she actually didn't _say anything_, so he quickly added, "Lately you're running low on things that you can afford to screw up or even things to get right, and everyone can tell that it's seriously freaking you out."

"You're a doctor," she interrupted, "not a psychiatrist. Would you _move_—"

"Come on, Kara," he said, more pleading now, more personal. "I'm not just talking about one thing here. Even I can see it's not healthy, the way you drink like a fish and—hell, you make Jim look like a _nun_. And I think we both know that whatever all that used to do for you, it ain't working now—"

"What the hell does it matter?" she snapped, pushing at his shoulders more insistently; with a sigh he moved and got down a step, and she made past him and down with the bottle still hanging from her right hand. He was frowning, troubled, lingering at the bottom of the ladder when she gave the last inch at the bottom of the bottle an irritated look and then just threw the thing into the receptacle where they had all the scrapped parts, angrily barking, "I don't_ know_, what I am supposed to be _doing_. Okay, I spent years thinking, It doesn't matter how frakking bad I screw things up for myself, I'm gonna get these people to a home if it kills me, and that's gone, they died, so now what? Aside from the possibility of some sick almighty cosmic_ fluke_, I don't know why the frak I ended up here—I should just be dead anyway..."

She made it only half a pacing step before he'd stomped up and she was jerked back by the wrist, McCoy demanding, "What?"

The very hint of her pulling back only spurred him to grab her closer, not tolerating her hesitance, repeating, "_What_?"

Her eyes became flat, grim. "What do you even know about me, doc. How do you know I didn't throw myself into that storm and—"

His hand grabbed her chin, a little hard, his voice rough with something buckling. "God help me, girl, if you ever say one fuckin thing like that to me again..."

But he couldn't even finish that before he cut himself off into a softer, seething aggravation. His other hand had clutched at her right arm at some point and a lot of things were occurring to her: The cold metal of that ring on his pinky she had her own story about, how he'd taken it off a more meaningful finger but couldn't quite make himself get rid of it, and the similar conscious burn of her own past emblazoned on her other arm, the memorized weight of what hung from her dog tag chain tucked away under her shirt; how every time she missed any of them all she could think about was what she'd done, the particular ways in which she'd scalded all the nice guys to the point that she didn't think she even deserved the longing now. It struck her—a strange thought about someone who always looked at her like she was stepping on his foot, was glaring at and gripping her so almost harshly now and just seemed so _stung_ all the time—that somehow, he might be the nicest. And now his eyes were daring to blatantly contemplate, moving to her lips, his head unconsciously, maybe more than unconsciously, moving; something in her stomach collapsed in all directions and she somehow realized through it that this was about to happen because she wasn't doing anything to stop it.

She found it, quickly, the only place in herself that knew to do what she did, if she only managed the protest in a weak whisper just as his mouth came closer to hers.

"Don't."

His eyes just slowly dissolved into a tired expression with something else that was hard for her to witness as he backed himself out of her space. His actions said, 'Fine, okay,' but she didn't think he could be restrained from feeling like the only man she'd ever said no to. He really kind of was, but he'd never pick up on what that meant.

He nearly had his back to her as they were both standing there brewing with thoughts; Kara finally muttered, "Don't be pissed at me."

"Kara...I am not pissed at you," he slowly protested. Something pestered at him and he seemed to think, _fuck it_, and he walked right back into her space just to say it. "Whatever you _did_? Whatever's been _done_ to you." He shook his head slowly. "I don't care. And as for your gods or whatever it is, I think it's time you got to thinking maybe there's nothing to all of this but a chance to start over. You got little else but to see it that way, you just don't think you deserve it as simple as that."

Her manners responded with simple exasperation, twinging away, and he just sighed and leaned in close to talk very low, his breath on her hair.

"Just. Calm. _Down_." He looked her in the face again, shook his head and said, "I'll see you tomorrow morning."

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It was somewhere far past late when she came around to Jim's cabin. She was clutching at her arms looking weirdly small when he answered. He was shirtless, pajama panted, resting against a fist to the threshold. When she volunteered no explanation or excuse like "Ensign Lackerbey snores," he just gave her a tense look mingled with a hint of guilt. Without saying anything he let her come in.

He took his shoes off and got into bed with his uniform still on, looking exhausted and giving off the impression that he'd been too distracted by something to try to sleep before. He handed her a good amount of the blanket for her to situate herself under, and they shifted down, facing each other with almost a foot of space between them. Kara blinked, her mind twitching in a memory of sharing beds with boys back as a teenager: Husky laughs and pillow fights that would feather her mother's coarse words into a distant dust after her sneaking out after dark, trying to pretend it wasn't about that when she came throwing empty cans at their bedroom windows; the memory left just as fast with Jim's brows lowering through the faintest light of the room.

"Sorry about today," he finally offered.

She just shook her head. She didn't want to talk to the captain right now. She'd actually kind of forgotten they had a fight when she showed up at his room because that had just been his job talking. Even though the line between him and that was hard to pinpoint, it was there. This side of him she'd never quite seen before but somehow suspected existed, this Jim who could actually stand to say nothing, had a lot to do with it.

She thought about apologizing, saying something about how it was a bad idea not to be more professional with him if she eventually wanted him to officially be her superior officer, and also explain through her unsteady clarity that he was one of the loose handful of people in the universe she knew much of anything about and treating him like that just wasn't going to happen any time soon.

But when she looked, he'd rolled farther into the bed and had his eyes closed, so she just turned over to hug a pillow under her and sank after him into sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

Kirk hadn't thrown out her toothbrush. This gave her some pause in the morning when she'd been about to borrow his and remembered the yellow one had been hers. She brushed vigorously with just water, having never figured out what contraption dispensed the toothpaste and simply being used to doing without all that time.

Her movements slowed as she was confronted with her reflection: When she tilted her body a certain way, her eyes shifted into a glare at the tattoo on her left arm.

She tried to even imagine stuttering it out, something like: _I am widowed_. Her mind dryly added, _very_ widowed, curling away from the waiting sting of it. All the old friends, all those men and their names in monosyllables tapping through her pulse. Their dead and gone smells, the dust of them probably only so many inconsequential particles gravitated into white-hot stars somewhere...She hardly had the energy to keep the memories at bay these days.

She jumped as Jim came into the bathroom; she spit, rinsed, gave him a tired half-smile. They slouched into a comfortable silence, doing their thing in front of the mirror until Jim, talking around his toothbrush, mumbled, "Yew okay?"

She shrugged as she plucked at her molars. "I don't know," she managed to reply.

A minute later when Jim was about to shave, he sighed. "I'm just...wondering, cause you've definitely flossed your entire mouth like three times ever since I came in here..."

Her shoulders sank down, and she agitatedly stopped and threw the floss away, her breath quickening in a kind of growl.

"Hey, did Bones come talk to you last night?" Jim asked, suddenly curious. "He seemed worried after I told him why you never went back to med bay."

"Yeah," she said bluntly. She ran the water again and leaned over, slowly clapped some water over her face. She dried off with a little white towel, rubbing hard at her eyes, then tossed it down. She said, "He tried to kiss me."

There was that morning's lagging half-second before Jim reacted, and then his eyes were widening, one eyebrow cocking, like he was extremely impressed. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," she said, nearly accusingly.

"What do you want me to do about it?"

She scoffed. "Nothing, I guess. It's not like you'd talk to him..."

"Oh, I will most definitely be talking to him about it," Jim said in a slight chuckle. There was a long pause before he jumped at a sudden bang and looked directly at Kara for the first time in a few minutes; she'd launched an angry kick at the cupboard and was throwing tense hands up, clawing at nothing.

"For frak sakes, I just can't deal with this bullshit right now." Her voice was wound tight as she muttered, starting to make her way out of the bathroom; she was stopped by Kirk's light grasp on her arms, his casually soothing words.

"Hey, hey, hey—hold on. Babe? Take it easy." He kind of cautiously leaned her back against the sink, rubbing at her arms a little when his hands decided she wasn't something about to explode. "Take it easy. Jesus, just...you know. Fucking breathe for a second."

After a second of grudgingly letting a couple breaths in and out, Kara looked up, lightly narrowed her glance at Jim. His eyes looked far and away for a moment before he let out a scoff.

"What's funny?"

"I don't know if you'd find it _funny_, but I just randomly got reminded of it." He paused to collect the memory a little. "Sometimes I remember when we were on this planet, in the Tantalus system, when I was maybe half a year into captaincy, and um...Let's just say something really pissed me off, so badly I actually couldn't think straight, and it really wasn't a good time to lose my head. And I'm just very unprofessionally freaking out, and you know, of course I'm trying to take deep breaths and everything; and then Spock just takes a few steps over to me, all smooth and calm, of course..."

Kara gave a sardonic look to agree with the 'of course.'

Jim paused, burying his smile to compose a good enough impression of a slightly irritant, drawn-out monotone: "And he just says...'Through the nose, Captain'."

Kara broke out into a kind of slow giggle like she wasn't sure if she found it funny or just strange. Jim was grinning wide, and she knew he always found it funnier in retrospect than anyone else did, but that made it more amusing somehow.

"I mean, he was unkindly telling me to pull my ass together, but he was also watching out for me in his own way. I think one of the reasons I remember that is because it was when I realized he was finally starting to act like he was really my friend."

She said, "It's hard for me to imagine you freaking out that bad, honestly."

"Uh..." Jim's look got a bit heavier. "Well, we'd just had a casualty. Just something really stupid that could've been avoided, and it was the first crew member we'd lost under my command, so I was pretty wound up. I guess I was still in that place where even though you know it eventually happens, you kinda think, not to me, not here. Not under my watch."

Kara, considering all the long-gone echoes in how he described it, leaned back and rested on her hands behind her, considering him for a moment. "You've changed," she accused thoughtfully.

He looked a little baffled. "Wuh..."

"No, I don't mean since I met you," she interrupted, knowing he'd get it.

"Oh. Well, it happens," he replied, half shrugging it off.

She smiled. "People keep saying I'm so much like you. I'm starting to wonder if they actually mean it as a compliment."

"They fucking better," Jim cut back. Kara started to snicker.

"And there's this story about the day you got command that you keep stepping around actually telling me..." She shook her head. "I'm onto you, Kirk," she teased as she nudged off the counter top.

Jim squinted at her, somehow sheepish and defiant at once. "Is that so?"

"Yeah."

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It hadn't been enough sleep, of course, and around 2200 Kara was a sleeping mess over a PADD book on protocol, half-awakened by the rude motion of the chair being pulled out under her, a familiar voice insisting, "Alright, come on, let's go..."

"Mruh," she mumbled in exhausted protest, and with lids mostly shut, her expression creased more as McCoy started scooping her out of the chair before her body had the chance to flop down away from the table. Offended, she grumbled, "Nuh-uh. C'mon, no, don't _carry_ me..."

He just chuckled at her drowsy protests, quickly hitching her up with a surprising ease. She glared and let out another protesting groan, but pulled up her loosely hanging arm and set her head into his shoulder, too exhausted to really resist.

"Haven't been frakking carried to bed since I was—"

"Oh, shut up," he cut off in a gently authoritative tone he sometimes used with Kirk. "Sick of you falling asleep all over the place. I know you won't thank me, but your back might."

Without seeing it she felt that they were turning into his office, and in a moment her body was being lowered quickly but gently onto the long futon across from his desk. He'd already moved a pillow there and her head rocked limply into it before she reached up a lazy hand to brush some of her hair out of her face. Her breath hitched slightly, and then she winced, rubbing her palm against her forehead.

"What?"

"I got a migraine. Anything you can give me?"

"Must be pretty bad for you to_ ask_," he remarked, giving a single hard pat to her leg before he went to get her something.

When he came back and put a capsule into her hand, she narrowed her brows at it. "This is a pill," she observed.

"What, you think we vaccinate for headaches?"

She shrugged, swallowed it.

He handed her a cold pack. "Mess with that till it kicks in."

She lay with her eyes closed holding it against her head. It took her a moment to even think about the fact that he hadn't gone away, was just sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, waiting for her to give it back. They'd been far from giving each other the silent treatment that day, but it was the first time they'd been anything like alone since the pod bay. Her being only half-awake made it easier for both of them. When McCoy finally mumbled something, it seemed like he'd wanted to say it all day but hadn't wanted to have to corner her, make her feel like she had to say something back.

"I'm sorry if I was out of line last night," he said, like he was talking to himself.

Her silence was a particular lack of response that seemed gradually accepting. It must have been a couple minutes that went by, before the question rasped out of her mouth.

"Did you love your wife?"

He reacted as if it was a perfectly sensible question; he turned his head far enough for her to see his face, and the incredulous look all over it wasn't in response to the fact that she'd asked. "Are you kidding?..._Terribly_."

She didn't ask anything further. But after considering for a moment, he meandered into the next thought and just quietly spoke his mind.

"I think people always want to ask, but they don't, whose fault it was, or who left who..." He shook his head. "The story, officially, is that she took a year or so of her sweet time very slowly leaving me. But by the end of it neither of us were clean. I said some fuckin _awful _things to her, I don't even think I felt like myself for a long time after saying those things. And then she files for the divorce, and people came around to _console _me, and I just couldn't do it. I went it alone, I started cutting people off, just missing the hell out of her...When you start to think you don't even deserve to miss someone, when that's all you've got left of it, that's the part that's really fucked up."

He heard her legs shifting behind him, and when he looked over she seemed to have pulled herself in tighter; she was lying more on her side now, her hands gripping at her forearms like she was a little cold, the head pack just sitting next to her now. Instead of making much of an effort to look like she was fine, she just flatly said, "I think I'm getting pretty frakked up, doc."

"...Look." McCoy shifted over slightly, resting his right arm up on the couch. "I'm not looking to replace anything or anybody for you, it doesn't work like that. I just keep thinking that all of this is really gonna_ hit _you one of these days, everything you've lost. It's not easy to hear it, but I don't think you're out of the woods. And I'm not just talking on behalf of myself trying to make you realize you don't have to be alone when all that happens."

Her shoulders and her frowning gaze slowly moved to face the ceiling; after a second he got up and came back with a blanket. The air whisped cool under it before it fell along her body, and her lids were resistant, pulling shut. She was just barely clinging onto consciousness and she heard his voice creep through the sleepy dust; she'd probably never heard him say anything so quietly before, but she heard it, a slipping mumble of something that only half made sense, was only half said:

"...'Night, bird."

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Kara had slept for five or six hours when she was awoken by a swift presence in the room; Nyota Uhura was walking by and gasped just as she stirred slightly.

"I...didn't think anyone was in here," she quickly said, her tone only giving away a note of confusion at finding Kara sleeping in here.

Kara blinked, looking around as she detected a vague sense of emergency about Uhura. "What's up?"

"I was just checking in on the way to the ready room to see if McCoy showed up here, nobody knows where he is." In response to Kara's confusion she added, "You hadn't noticed the comms are completely blown?"

"The disruption got worse? Why...Why do they need him, what's..." Kara shifted herself up to sitting as Uhura took in a breath, halting in a few steps she'd taken to quickly leave as if she wasn't sure if she should take the time to explain. She interrupted, "Never mind if it's a long story. If you need to get back there, I could look for him. I have no idea where he could _be_, but I'll look..."

"Thanks." Uhura briskly turned and left while Kara worked herself up on her feet.

It had taken several weeks of being on the ship for Kara to feel very comfortable using the communications system, but she was more than able to grasp now how much of a pain it would be to not have them at all. She honestly thought the best way to find McCoy would be to just wait till he got back to medical, but realized maybe Uhura left him a note of some kind, so she pulled on her hooded sweater and started meandering through the halls to check the limited number of locations where she thought he might be out of the same bored sense of duty she took to the tedium of her volunteer work.

After no success, she was ready to give up and head back to medical bay when she ran right into the CMO as he was exiting the observation deck. She cocked her eyebrow in surprise that he would even be in there, but it seemed like he might have just popped in for a moment; upon seeing her, he put his arms out in a gesture of sharing puzzlement.

"We've stopped," he remarked as if asking if she'd heard anything about it.

"They need you in the ready room." She took stride along next to him. "We've stopped completely? I wonder if the subspace disruptions mean we can't risk warp speed."

He cast her a moderately bewildered glance and she was glad he didn't make some comment about how she must've been reading more about whatever the fuck. "I got no idea. This whole thing, losing the comm systems, it's weird."

"Makes you wonder what's gonna go next," Kara muttered.

"Ah, Jesus, don't say that." McCoy swiftly turned to enter as soon as they got to the ready room. Kara started continuing down the hallway. "Where do you think you're going?" he demanded.

"I..." Kara didn't quite manage an awkward protest before she stopped, crossed her arms and followed him into the room.

Inside, she hardly felt self-conscious, too taken aback by the unusual amount of officers and noise level in the room. There were some fifteen people, all restlessly standing rather than sitting at the table and delving into muttered hearsay while Kirk and Spock were intently trading their own asides at the end of the table closer to the door, their backs bent over something on the main computer screen. As she passed by where McCoy was joining the two of them she heard some static from Kirk: "If they had some way of calming the tetryon movements in the subspace, that would've fuzzed a big hole in communications that we noticed before but didn't hit our own comms until we got into the middle of it..."

Kara simply gave a subdued grimace at Scotty as she took a place leaning against the wall close behind him. A minute later Kirk was trying to talk to Uhura and paused, reached up and gave a cutting-off gesture that made everyone go quiet.

Uhura was explaining, "The message was encoded on a radio signal radiating from the neutron star we passed earlier—"

"How did you...I mean—"

Uhura shrugged. "The system picks up any abnormal sound patterns. Normally I would dismiss it, but I kind of had a hunch, that if somebody was unable to communicate because of the disruptions..."

One of the ensigns expressed some general confusion, so Kirk briskly and loudly explained, "We've received what seems to be an automated distress call from an unknown vessel embedded in a radio signal. The coordinates attached are close enough to where we were about eight hours ago for us to assume they're no longer there. Which leads us to believe we may be dealing with a hostage situation, especially in the case that someone out there is intentionally causing this disruption so that they're hidden in an undetectable bubble."

Kara was already working it out in her head and could figure why Kirk looked extremely irritated by the situation; normally if they didn't have any certainty of what they were up against, they'd contact some other Starfleet vessel, call in help, but they'd have to veer too far off from any definite idea of where to find this ship while giving the captors even more space to get away.

Sulu pitched up, "Wouldn't their own systems be affected by it too?"

"It is doubtful, for one thing, that they are able to use warp speed," Spock granted. "But given that we do not know what kind of device would create the subspace distortion, it seems that in the case it was used to enable illegal activity it may create a small field around its own ship that would make their systems immune to the communication disruption and would essentially cloak them from being detected anywhere from within the disruptive field."

"The trick is finding where that damn barrier begins," Kirk muttered. "We'll be lucky enough if we can find them just on visual."

Uhura shook her head with a sigh. "It seems like the message should've had more information...The audio goes on for hours and hours, but it's just this tapping static, like the message was damaged. Otherwise, we might be able to identify language and species..."

Gaila hopped up from where she was leaning against the table close to Scotty. "Wait...Let me listen."

She moved around the table and squeezed in-between Kirk and Uhura to put on the one earpiece that would work without the wireless system; after a moment her eyes widened excitedly, and she nudged Kirk by the waist to get her hands moving with their own nimble eagerness over the computer screen, punching in numbers and commands in the non-verbal habit of many of the programmers.

Kirk gave her a narrow look. "Gaila?"

"It might be a form of Orion messaging technology they don't really use any more...The noise is basically a morse-coded binary set—Sometimes it can be used to transmit images, if I can just remember the formula..." She paused. "Give me a minute."

The room had escalated into murmers again. Kara took the moment to lean in and tap Scotty on the shoulder. As they exchanged some whispers, Kirk noticed and cast the briefest slightly wary glance in their direction.

"Yes!" Gaila finally hissed, proudly made some last jotting configurations with the stylus pen and bopped an image up onto the 3-D projection. A rough black-and-white chart came up, and Kirk was giving Gaila some mutter of approval as he studied the version she had on her screen.

"It's a schematic of their ship?" somebody said.

"Looks pretty rough."

Gaila was squinting at the diagram with a vaguely less than pleased expression. "It's just a default code that gets sent along with any message, but it gives us an idea how many passengers and what kind of group we're dealing with."

"But you'd confirm this is definitely an Orion vessel?" Kirk checked. Gaila nodded, and he was scrutinizing her. "What can you tell us?"

"This class was discontinued from combative use a long time ago...What's left of them were generally pawned off for all kinds of independent use. Most of these are inhabited by people whose living calls for constant traveling. There are probably about three hundred people living on this ship, possibly without much of an organized leadership system..." She shrugged, then after watching Kirk study his notes with a lot of wheels turning, offered more shyly, "Captain, I know you might not take this into consideration, but I don't think we can assume that these are just innocent traders. We could be dealing with any kind of black market dealers, even if it's not full-on organized crime...There could be some shady people on board. If you're serious about taking a big risk to help them, I just hope you'll keep in mind that they may not be the kind of people who would do the same for us."

Kirk looked up at her after a moment of hesitation, muttered a distracted, "Thank you, Gaila," his manners still looking indecisive.

As the chattering picked up again, Kara just said, "Gangs on gangs?" The ensign to her left shrugged. She nudged closer into the table, leaned in. "Hey. Gaila."

The Orion stepped around Kirk and Spock to the corner closer to Kara.

"You said they could be slave traders...Do you think if that's the case, the ship might be filled over capacity?"

Kirk had heard; he looked back at Gaila, who nodded and told him, "That's a good point."

Kara had her lips pressed together, her eyes fixed on Kirk until he met them. "So what's the plan, sir?"

"Don't know yet," Kirk said bluntly. In another minute he still sensed her eyes on him, looked up to see her waiting with her arms crossed. The conversing bustled on around them as he slowly leaned forward to rest against the table on his hands, returning the look. "Thrace, if you've got something to say, we better get it over with."

The room quieted a little. Kara cleared her throat.

"You have a broad range of coordinates where you think this ship might be?"

"Chekov is getting on a very good guess," Kirk replied.

She leaned forward, echoing his bent posture. "We have a vessel that is not only considerably ideal for navigating without subspace technologies, but we have one that is possibly, maybe small enough to go undetected or at least be mistaken for a spacial distortion, given that their sensors are even working better than yours."

Kirk made a motion of self-containment, reaching up to rub one of his eyes. "And you're suggesting?"

Annoyed at his demand for clarification when he had to know exactly where she was going with this, she said, "Let me take the Firebird and get a head-start. I do a reconnaissance check to see what's really out there and if we're outnumbered, I might get lucky and be able to start taking out their systems before they realize what's going on. When they do, I kick back into gear and run for cover in the soup. I intercept Enterprise on the way and report on their location, or I don't. Either way, if you're going to do this, it couldn't hurt."

One second passed, and Kirk let out a laugh like she was just wasting his time. "And what makes you think I'd let you do that? Do you not remember what happened when you tried to take on _one_ ship single-handedly? We have no idea how many vessels are even on these guys."

"I have a faster bird now. And I'm still a damn good pilot."

"Look, I've let by some crazy stuff, but this is seriously, _seriously _pushing your luck. I mean, the chances of even—Spock, what are her chances of survival?"

The first officer announced, "The circumstances being uncertain, it is difficult to define a precise probability, but I would determine roughly a forty-five percent chance of Thrace's survival." Then he interrupted Kirk. "I would add, however, that if she is willing to take such a risk, it is worth considering how much would be gained in terms of protecting lives. I do think our entire crew is at a considerable risk if we attempt to enter into this conflict without any aid she can offer to weaken our opponents in advance."

Kirk paused, turning it over, but only for a brief moment. He shook his head. "No. I don't like it."

She seethed out a breath. "Look, you know this is the best plan we'll come up with. Just because I'm not qualified to—"

"That's not the beginning of it, Kara," Jim snapped. "You need to get it through your head that we don't do that. We don't just send people to _die_. We come up with something else."

"To hell with that, okay, 'something else' is gonna be wading back to contact Starfleet— By the time we make it back to this region it could be too late to even find them again. You might be able to accept that we tried, but I'm willing to take the risk—"

"Oh, no." Kirk shook his head tightly, severely. His voice was considerably raised as he suddenly barked, "I will throw you off this ship and on your ass if you are even trying to imply that I take this kind of thing lightly—"

"Dammit, both of you fucking _can it_!" McCoy roared. "Jim—"

The captain hoisted himself into some composure enough to give McCoy some lazy pacifying motion. "Bones, yeah, I know what you—"

"I don't think you do," the doctor interrupted. In response to Kirk giving him some full attention, he flatly insisted, "You're gonna let her do it."

"—We..." Kirk's voice fell flat.

The entire room was looking with varying reactions of shock at McCoy, all except Kara, who looked away, bristled her shoulders and took the moment to unzip her sweater and start shrugging it off like she was content to start getting ready to go while they had it out.

Kirk was turning a look at Spock, as if the science officer might change his mind in order to disagree with Bones just so that there would be some order in the universe after all, but only saw an eyebrow cocked in quiet surprise. The captain looked back at his CMO and finally managed to stutter out, "_You_...?"

"Don't even try to tell me you wouldn't try to do something this stupid," Bones cut off.

"Yeah," Kirk nodded. "That's exactly why you're supposed to be freaking out about how completely insane it is, what the fuck do you—"

"_Hey_," Kara interrupted with a tone of something shifted, putting her hands up. "You know what, I'm done waiting around for you to debate this. I'm taking the bird, I'm doing this. If you don't want me back here afterwards I'll just have to deal with it and find something else."

Kirk's face was knocked into helpless shock; nobody had a chance to get out anything before she turned to leave, shouting, "Who can get me suited up?"

.

.

.

.

Suddenly it seemed like everyone on the ship had something they were supposed to be doing; several officers were hauling out and checking and double checking the mechanics on the Firebird before they buckled it in for take-off, and somehow in spite of the disabled comms some ensign Kara had never met knew to help her step into a space jumper, fastening the weird 'X' over her chest and nipping out instructions on the emergency settings in case of ejection, as if she wasn't completely frakked if she ended up having to jump ship.

"Now, on the off-chance that you'll be able tuh use the warp speed, you'll probably _need_ to, so I'm not gonna bother reminding you that we haven't even tested it yet. You'll just havta trust our girl. Jus' don't stress on your thrusters as soon as you punch it in, it'll feel pretty weird, but just..." Scotty trailed off as Kara nodded in response to the tenth cautionary instruction he'd given her, mentally trying to jot it all down along with the tips she was getting right and left from people bustling in and out of the closed landing bay. She could barely give anything her full attention as McCoy immersed from the crowd, only realizing his proximity as he reached to move her hair off her neck.

"What is it?" she demanded, already anticipating the prick of the vaccination.

"Just a stimulant. You haven't slept enough."

"Will it—"

"No."

Something about him right then was by its own definition uncomfortable and clumsy: He wasn't himself, sending her off like this, it was all the wrong size on him, it made the briefest touch of his fingers against her neck a little unsteady, too careful. She may have opened her mouth to say something but got snagged on the hesitance to call him anything like "Doctor," and he was putting her hair back in place as if it hadn't already looked like hell when Kirk was coming up by her and pulling her to attention by the arm. When she just barely glanced back, McCoy had already disappeared behind the crowd.

Jim was going over the projected coordinates that one of the technicians was currently installing into her avionics, and she didn't interrupt when he went over stuff she'd already been told; his tone was carefully professional, avoidant of the circumstances as he rambled off the fastest, but he was good at explaining things, she realized. She tried not to register the punch to her gut, a place in her pulled off of its balance just a second ago, that she might not be coming back to learn anything else about him, about anybody; she nodded tersely as they reached the Firebird and the last programmer was crawling out of it and signaling to her that he was done.

"Remember, as soon as you find it, if you need to assess the situation, take cover under the Orion vessel; your best bet is that the enemy sensors will make you blend right into their ship if they don't immediately pick you up. Whatever you do, don't go blasting their ships to hell without knowing what you're shooting. We can't have you blowing up their life support systems—"

"Yeah, Jim, I know." Kara sighed, recited, "Don't act until I have a relatively good chance of disarming them or giving you guys an in. First priority is weakening their energy output so that the disruptions might pan out."

"And we are just eyeballing right behind you at about the same speed, if it comes down to waiting, the leeway's only about ten minutes."

Kara was eagerly on her way up to situate herself in the cockpit; Kirk was after her, standing at the top of the ladder, his face betraying his collected demeanor and falling into his particular agitation that usually came in response to feeling profoundly and unquestionably out of control of a situation.

"You were just pulling my leg, right?" he said. "About not coming back?"

Kara rubbed at one of her eyes. "Jim, not to get existential on your ass, but I gotta tell you I'm really not sure where I'm supposed to be right now. Look, I obviously don't have time to think about this, I haven't even made it out alive yet..."

He responded with a mere glare of dismissal. She was considering something for a second, her shoulder slumping in a sigh, before she abruptly teethed her right glove off and dug under her collar to remove the chain around her neck. Jim watched as she slipped the silver band on her thumb, pulling the chain through to remove it, and then held out the single tag hanging from the bronze links.

She shook her head at herself. "I'll...let you figure out who should keep that if I don't come back."

The thing was in his hand somehow, and it was her clarity that practically horrified him. He gave some motion like he didn't want it, gave a frustrated breath and then just clutched at the edge of the cockpit. "_Jesus_—Kara, you're not really—"

"You've got one thing to say to me," she sternly interrupted, "and you know what it is."

He bit against some outburst again, gave a kind of irritated half-kick against the ladder. Then he collected himself enough to utter with rich emphasis, "Good hunting."

She saluted him. When he got to the bottom of the ladder and pulled it away, barking a couple orders around the deck, Kara was giving the thumbs-up and pulling the glass over her head.


	7. Chapter 7

It was perfectly possible, if you knew the astronomical layout, to plot courses the "old-fashioned way." Finding somebody who could do it, she'd assumed, was going to be the biggest hang-up in getting her off the ship. In part of the onrush Chekov had, in his twitching earnest mannerisms, rushed up to give one of the engineers the data chip which had the course laid out for her only ten minutes after Kirk had more or less given her mission the get-go. She'd demanded, "Wait...Who did those?"

Somehow, though it might have been a logical assumption, it had managed to escape her attention that the 19-year-old who'd been coyly stealing spoonfuls of her _pashka_ for many weeks, supposedly, was some kind of frakking genius.

He'd better be, was all she was thinking as she commanded the Bird, in a way that felt very blind just from the short experience of practicing on test rides, to plot the course from scratch. It was a big override song and dance to deal with the computers when the default sensors weren't picking up anything, so most of it had been set up for her under preset voice commands.

The coordinates actually weren't that far away, and she needed a pretty low speed once she actually spotted them, so she was cruising in as fast as the vessel could go on pilot mode until she saw anything, which she'd been told could take anywhere from thirty minutes to several hours. Space was a stifling, velvety quiet, not calming like it was when she had somebody to talk to. She initially hadn't known how she felt about her new viper being a two-seater but she'd really warmed up to the design, especially after the memorable ride she'd given Kirk; out in space with just the two of them away from the crew, they'd descended into the lowest gleeful throes of immaturity that reminded her of the lewder jokes the old pilots used to throw. She'd offered McCoy a joy ride a couple times, but he was always put off of the idea for some reason or another, using the excuse that it wasn't his job.

She tried to avoid that feeling that was tangling tighter somewhere around her esophagus, but in the dryness of her boredom, dwelled on it enough to innerly remark that she was a little disappointed in herself. She was usually better at this shit. Apparently she'd gone extremely out of practice, no longer used to the lingering possibility of death breathing down her neck all the time. Not death, really, but the whole...leaving part.

She didn't get it, was the thing. It just seemed like if things were meant to work out for her on what just happened to be the first slick-ass ship she ran into when she came out here, things would _work out_. She'd just not really had the time lately to even ask herself what she believed in anymore, but whether there was anything providential in the fact that her heart was still beating was even less relevant than it had been to her before. Somehow she'd stopped paying attention to any of that anyway.

She was already getting her hands too wet. After she'd landed in it had all started pretty fast; everybody had started talking at once, being nice, and she hadn't even thought about it, and there was no excuse now for the fact that she owed Scotty a beer and a game of backgammon for every time she called his ship an "it" and had a bet going with herself on whether she'd ever be able to make Spock laugh with his eyes the way the captain could do, that she'd made the kind of friend who doesn't throw out your toothbrush even though he knows you aren't coming over for that anymore; that there was a person who at some point had woken some impatiently scolding voice in her head that went _Absolutely not, gods dammit, whatever you do. Do NOT sleep with him. _It was all bad news, cause if she wasn't going to make officer she _had_ to do something else, and it had been easier to throw that out in the midst of an argument with Kirk over something bigger than herself, because the very idea of leaving really was, quite pathetically, almost making her sick.

Bad, _bad_ news.

Kara blinked, leaned forward: A ship in the distance. No, two ships, no..._three_.

With a sinking slow sigh, Kara squinted, making out one ship she was pretty sure fit the layout of the schematic image Gaila had decoded; the other ships were a murky dark grey against the background, matching smaller vessels that looked like they probably supported not much more capacity than the Orion vessel, which was situated between the others in a way that seemed to confirm this probably was a hostage take-up.

Kara's reaction was delayed; once she realized this was definitely it, she mumbled, "_Dammit_." Things were a lot more complicated with two enemy vessels if she wanted any hope of destroying their subspace toys.

She shook her head in disappointment, having known she would've been pretty damn lucky to be able to clear up the disruptions but unable to help the current frustration of figuring what she should do now. She had already started yielding and let the bird come to a hovering stop; as she did this, it was easier to note that the vessels were coming as a group slightly in her direction, slowly enough to confirm they weren't able to move any faster than the _Enterprise_. She checked the screen's functioning systems to see if anything had changed, confirming that the ship still couldn't map anything; tilting her vessel, she quickly acted on the hope that being outside of their communications bubble—presuming they were right about _that_—meant that they couldn't pick up on her presence yet. They were moving closer, and she planned as they passed to start moving parallel and far enough to be obscured, take a minute to figure out what her next step should be.

They were close enough to seem quite a bit faster now; Kara hitched her little vessel back a little, turning, waiting. She checked the systems again as they came sliding by, seeing no change, giving the slight thrust to start moving with the ships, syncing far out over the starboard shoulder of one of the darker vessels and just praying the size of the barrier was constant.

But this was no help. The offending ships looked like no model or diagram she'd ever seen before; on top of that, the cylindrical structure was all too sleek, far from looking like the somewhat basic and predictable layout of Starfleet vessels. For one thing, there was no indication of any kind of where the bridge would be;_ Kudos, guys_, she thought dryly. She couldn't begin to guess where the warp core might be, but it was probably even more efficiently enclosed than _Enterprise_'s...

This was frakked. New plan: Get into the bubble. If they attack watch how they move and try to observe what needs to be protected. If not go for cover and see if systems can help identify vessel. If not start shooting and see how they move. Or she could just get the hell out of here and not do anything.

She took a moment. She thought about the _Enterprise_ trying to take on two vessels, possibly, maybe, with the aid of the hostage vessel, if they were capable of controlling their own ship. Possibly. She thought about the probability that the baddies were cowards and might not actually fire. And the possibility that they were the kinds of cowards that _always_ fired. And the fact that they undoubtedly were coming either way, in no small part because of her.

The moment was over. She gripped the stick, readied her instincts; swerved.

She tore out, heading straight for the gap between the nearest vessel and the mud-red ship with a gigantic bat-like shape. She bit her lip hard, gracefully tucking the bird down and doing a couple spins to ease the speed of her sidling and lightly thrusting until she was under the ship; she flipped upside quickly, then slowed, slowed...She managed to land on the bottom side of one of the Orions' massive wings with a slow bop.

She instinctively paused, counted to ten. She even counted longer. Nothing had happened.

"Okay, okay, okay..." She muttered through her jumpy anxiety, dragging her tongue over her teeth as she noticed all the blinking and ticking on of different indicators on her data screen. She wasn't used to talking to computers still, but in the rush it all felt pretty user-friendly. "Computer, identify contacts."

She'd had it rigged for text-only responses: **ORION VESSEL: HIRYA CLASS**. The screen mapped out a visual outline of all the ships; the colors blinked a couple pulses around the mystery vessels...

"Come on, come on..."

**2 UNKNOWN VESSELS: ANTI-MATTER POWER SOURCE DETECTED. ESTIMATED CAPACITIES: 200-300.**

She waited to see if any more information came up. "Display unknown vessels' projected interior?" she commanded uncertainly.

**UNABLE TO COMPLY.** Okay. Shit.

Okay. She couldn't just start firing on them without any chance at negotiation, but she was obviously far from anything they would see as a threat. Unless she could manage to convince them...If she just fired a couple shots over their noses...

"Computer," she demanded nervously. "Open messaging system..."

Before she'd even finished, though, something blipped onto the screen:

**RECEIVING MESSAGE...**

Kara froze. A box came up on the screen, and a line of text appeared in an unfamiliar language before the letters scrambled and conjoined their pixels again, the computer translating to standard.

**c#29915: hiding?**

Her mouth fell open just a little; she still didn't move. Should she...What—

**c#29915: friendly. if i was [:untranslatable:]_ Prenyd_ you'd be captured or worse**

Kara didn't have time to react any more solidly before another message came through:

**c#29915: don't know what you're doing but you should leave. lucky they haven't detected you. if they find out i saw you and didn't say anything...**

Kara became decisive then. Her instincts were to question, to mistrust, but...

She said, "I'm here to help you." The words came spilling into lines automatically on the screen. "I'm not Starfleet, but I'm with Starfleet. We got a distress call from somebody on your ship. My vessel is armed. More help on the way. Send."

The system complied. She expected a moment, but was a little surprised by the apparent hesitation. She had a strange instinctive feeling that she was talking to somebody who was quick on their thoughts, a good planner.

**c#29915: how much help?**

"One vessel. Send."

Another hesitation.

**c#29915: if you intend to aid them by partly disarming them should start with our vessel**

Kara scoffed in her confusion. "Uh..."

**c#29915: our leader too fearful of **_**Prenyd **_**to encode distress call but somebody disobeyed. when he found out he was paranoid that they would discover it and confessed**

Kara squinted, but was interrupted by another couple lines before she could ask for an explanation.

**c#29915: 12 of us have been murdered already on suspicion of conspiracy. he was hoping that a gesture of compliance would spare him. he and a few others have offered to assist attacking anyone who comes to aid the captured. we are now prisoners of our own leader as well as them**

"Son of a bitch," Kara muttered, then, "Delete that. You should know I probably have two or three minutes before they catch up. Is there any way you know of to help stop the subspace distortions?"

She was shocked by the answer: **c#29915: yes. stolen device, interferes with their engine. they put it on our ship. heavily guarded. in case of distraction, someone else may try to destroy it**

"I could help you with that distraction. Send."

**c#29915: in the case of their defenses failing, that would take priority and they may even abandon the disruptor**

"Where do I hit you? Send."

**c#29915: bridge. back-up controls are compromised by the disruptor**

It wasn't exactly a surprising answer. But it wasn't what she wanted to hear. She blinked, and what came out next surprised her: "What is your name. Send."

**c#29915: parnev**

"You can call me Starbuck," she replied. "Seeing as we're acquainted now...am I about to kill you? Send."

She was surprised by the hesitance.

**c#29915: i would rather be dead than enslaved. it is likely that if i survive i will be forced to take part in attacking you anyway**

"No," she muttered, a knee-jerk reaction. She egged herself on with more mumbles: "No. No, that isn't it. What is it. Come on. Come on..._Ugh_. Jim, I could use one of your plan C's right now..." Then, she sat up.

"Report me. Fake loyalty, or cowardice, whatever you need to do. Warn everyone to get out. Be very, very urgent, or they might make you stay. Now, send."

A short moment...

**c#29915: no. your safety would be extremely compromised.**

"I could still do some damage," she shot back. "I'm working up an escape course right now, do it, good luck, send."

She started getting to work, optimistically assuming she wouldn't hear back, snapping, "Computer, can you plot a course at warp speed?"

**NEGATIVE. SUBSPACE DATA INCOMPLETE AT THIS TIME.**

She was already shifting her ship right-side-back-up, letting it float over and up around the edge of the ship's wing, only vaguely registering at the back of her mind that that was pretty bad news. "Arms clutch," she commanded: the stick handle clicked open its upper compartment to reveal her armament controls, and she grappled the stick in familiar preparation. It only took a second for her to close her eyes, take in and let out a big breath.

Then she booted out, shooting quick along the side of the rusty-looking hull, watching the metal squares nailed together whip into a blur a handful of feet below her.

"Go, go, go. Okay. Be empty. Be empty, please..."

She'd noticed before that the bridge window was tinted from the outside and knew she wouldn't be able to tell if she was killing anybody until she started shooting. With her entire body wincing in protest, she blew around so that she was facing it stilled, and fired a line off. Once, twice, again.

The glass finally started to crack and well, no bodies were flying out. Four five six times, moving the bird along the broad length of the window; beyond it, sparks were flying, consoles blowing. Then the computer politely notified her she had incoming.

She ducked, shooting under towards one of the wings, then looping over it, evaluating her next movement with a brisk check at which ship had fired just as the blast went under and licked just the corner of the Orions' tail. Righty fired, head for lefty: She shot a hard thrust and sped towards what she estimated was the opposite end of where the photon blast had been shot from the twin ship. She didn't stop moving when she got to the end of the vaguely bullet-shaped vessel, just started stenciling a rapid spiral around it to evade fire from the other ship, around and around, about eleven seconds per trip, godsdammit, she sure as hell couldn't keep this up, they had to be able to—

"—GAGH!" Kara yelped, haulting short as a lethal flash of red-white shot up just in front of her from one of the hull's bubble-like extensions. She noticed with a side glance that the other ship wasn't pursuing her, it was headed to the hostage vessel, maybe it was about to dock somebody, maybe it thought just one could take her on...

Yeah, well, one _could_. And she realized she was surrounded by the big iron bubbles under her just in time to flip into some escape speed as two of them fired; her heart leapt in dread when she saw her nose go flamy-white, but then it just blackened at the very tip. She kicked into speed, seeing flashes behind and around her, adrenaline surging through her as she went into barrel roll after barrel roll and just tried to go faster and frakking _prayed_...

Then as she murkily noticed it her mind screamed, _SOMETHING IS BLINKING ON THE CONSOLE_, and the computer notified her, "Subspace calculations operational. You may specify—"

"GET ME THE FRAK OUT OF HERE."

"Unable to comply—"

"SHIT SHIT SHIT FRAKKING _FUCK_, DON'T WANNA DIE DON'T WANNA DIE—GO TO WARP!"

"Parameters must be specified."

Somehow she managed to _look_ at the screen, notice all the coordinates that had popped up with little symbols on her map.

"WARP SIX, UM, UM—"

Her mind was blanking; and then a torpedo blast was detected, coming up on her tail—

"PRESET COORDINATE ALPHA ONE." She remembered how it went on the bridge, could distinctly imagine Kirk commanding, 'Punch it.' And of course, she remembered now, because Scotty had that kind of sense of humor, that it was a big red button.

She reached to the far right where it was on the console and slammed her palm on it; there was a mechanical booting-up, a fractional hesitation just long enough for her to _see_ that the blast was_ going to kill her_, and she was wailing slightly when it felt like a gigantic force took its gargantuan fingers and just_ flicked_ her through the cosmos, and then her voice roared, in absolute glee.

"—WHOOOOOOOO HAHAAAAAAAAH! YEAH, THAT'S IT, YES! GODS DAMMIT, I love this baby, fuck, Scotty, THANK YOU..._Whooo_!"

The sight was an irregularly blurred sight of stars, some seeming to approach and move faster than others, and space seemed so very huge like this and damn, it was beautiful. When the Firebird reached a stable speed the seat automatically went into passenger mode, and she was still giving little giddy motions as it moved to elevate her out of the slight crouching position, even providing side surfaces that worked as armrests.

Kara leaned back a moment to catch her breath, closing her eyes for a minute, which felt _weird_ to be able to do in a moving combat vessel. She relaxed over the sight outside for a second before saying, "Okay, slow down, it's not like we need to be anywhere. Warp two."

A slight clicking whirr sounded as the vessel began its slow process of decreasing speed.

"Vessel approaching warp 2 speed," the computer serenely intoned. "New calculated time of arrival is in approximately thirty-four hours and sixteen minutes."

Kara lowered her brows then, having forgotten that she'd set an actual destination besides the rendezvous point she wasn't supposed to head back to for at least an hour.

"Uh...Where do you think you're going?"

"Selected destination is planet catalogued under coordinates labeled Alpha 1; Starfleet designation: Sol III in Sector 001. Local designation: Earth."

.

.

.

.

When subspace technologies had started whirring back to life less than two hours after Kara had taken off, several people on the bridge had cheered, partly out of optimistically thinking it was because of her. Then they'd gotten the urgent message from only a few parsecs away, an explanation of the hostage and alliance situation and the general headache they wouldn't have been able to figure out nearly as easily had there not been communications. Like the fact that the vessel taken hostage strategically had been given most of the weapons in the hands of allied Orions, none of which they were currently able to use, because their bridge had been fired on at a close enough range to totally blow the place.

Jim didn't get how she'd done it, but he didn't think he'd ever wanted more to see the woman in a fleet uniform as fast as fucking possible, that is, once he got through boarding with plenty of back-up, holding up and disarming and reporting all the criminal behavior and then eventually shaking some hands once his crew figured out who the cowards and traitors _weren't_. Contrary to what people might assume about his reasons for loving his job, playing cop was really not his favorite part of keeping order throughout the galaxy. It usually started out fun and then just got tedious, teaching him that there were only so many times in one day he could shrug off somebody's bullshit with cocky authority; after a while it was just sighs, tapping back onto the communicator to report another name.

Still, the Prenyd were something new, and definitely interesting. They looked pretty human but with a sand-like bumpy skin, and from what they could tell from this bunch, they'd been making a living off of a parasitic approach to piracy for a long time, concocting various ways to smuggle themselves throughout the region on other people's ships without being openly detected. It wasn't until they'd gotten their hands on the disruptors (apparently Romulan devices that some elusive third party had tinkered with and then sold and were completely unique, which Kirk got some immense excitement out of confiscating into the possession of his security division) that this particular group had even bothered attaining their own vessels, and he couldn't wait to hear about what they'd been doing before that, but for now it was still the boring part.

Through all the mess of directing people here and there, some of whom got their last hoorahs out of simply being as uncooperative as possible, he eventually had the thought that Kara could probably do the cut and shove of it with more finesse, and it was the first moment he'd had to think about her in the last hour or so. It was still a good thirty minutes before there were enough officers with a handle on the situation for him to beam back to _Enterprise_ and get to the bridge.

"How are we holding up?" Jim muttered one of his routine greetings. When he directly addressed Chekov, the navigator finally told him along with a few of the essential technical statuses that actually, they hadn't heard anything from Starbuck.

He'd been half assuming this entire time that he'd simply been too busy to hear directly about it when she showed up, figured that she'd be accepting some pats on the back and then heading directly to a pillow as soon as somebody had given her docking clearance. He didn't really know.

After a perplexed moment of troubled contemplation, he said, "Chekov, were you monitoring the system when we first came out of warp?"

"Yes, sir. Uh..." There was a 'well, kind of' in Chekov's uneasy shrug then, and Kirk knew what it meant. Of course he'd been monitoring everything, but it had been some immediate chaos as soon as they'd shown up, and looking out for a small speck of a Viper pilot shouldn't have been at the top of his priorities anyway. "I hafe been scanning for any signs of a damaged wessel, sir."

"Nothing?"

Chekov shook his head. It was only a slight relief; they had no solid reason yet to assume she was a goner, but where they were was just inching off the coordinate range of their rendezvous point, she should've been able to_ find_ them by now...

Kirk's mind was wickedly visiting ways in which she might have made it far out of the general area before her ship failed. One of the first things he'd said to her in the pod bay before she took off: _"Even if we had time to set you up with a life signs frequency it wouldn't work right now anyway, so—just—"_

He'd wanted to just say, 'Don't_ die_, okay?'

"Spock has already sent out a search party of two pods." This slip of information came from Rand, who was making a round on the bridge. Kirk was always confused but grateful with her tendency to be able to inform him of things just minutes away from it becoming a case of 'Why the hell didn't anybody tell _me _this?' He smiled faintly at his first officer's confidence in the fact that he hadn't needed to bother the captain for authorization before acting on the problem.

Kirk got on the comm to talk to Lieutenant Giotto on the other ship, "Status report, commander?"

"Captain, hi, we think we've managed to figure out who was in command of the perpetrators. We're ready to move some of these people into our brig so that interrogations can start..."

Jim nodded. "Good. Listen, your biggest concern is finding out what they've been doing for the past few months or so. I wanna know what other damage they've done and if it's anything we can still clean up. Also..." He sighed. "See if you could find out any details about Thrace? If any of them were responsible for what happened to her after she attacked?..."

"Understood, sir."

A bit over an hour later, Jim felt overwhelmed and idle at once, instinctively heading down to sick bay after he heard that McCoy had returned from the Orion ship with some people to heal. He had three Orion patients, two male and one female all lying on three straight beds. Only one of them, a man, looked to be in very bad shape. Kirk gave his obligatory captainly greeting to the two others while Bones was tending to him and what looked to be a nasty stab wound. Shortly after Jim got there Uhura came in, looking like she was back from running to check on something and went straight for the female patient already explaining something to her in her own language; Jim got the idea Bones had randomly flagged her down to come help him communicate with the patients. He could only cock an impressed eyebrow at her rattling off something that seemed difficult to explain gently, occasionally worrying a hand over her brow when she forgot a word or two. When the woman finally gave some single questioning word, Uhura gave a nervous laugh and some affirmative statement, and they were speaking more conversationally from that point.

When he was satisfied he wasn't interrupting anything, Jim crossed his arms and came up next to McCoy where he was entering vitals at the foot of the man's bed, still occasionally attempting to respond to the mutters of his patient, who seemed pretty distraught and was stammering some very broken standard.

"Is he...?"

"He's alright, he's stressed out. When Uhura gets a chance she'll set him straight, I just don't know what to tell him, he doesn't understand..."

After another moment Jim's eyes went to Bones, a little searching. Mostly ignoring him, the captain's friend just sighed and muttered, "Whatever that look is you came in here with, I don't think I can deal with it right now."

"What is there to say?...She's not here."

He heard a quick exhale of breath; McCoy was about to say something, but they both turned when the male patient started speaking up again, insistently stuttering, "_B'lenn kij...b'lenn_, live?..."

Jim tilted his head to the right. "Should we just...?"

"_Blui soit...b'lenn_. 'Starbeck' _krihsa_—"

Two heads whipped forward. Jim prompted, "Starbuck...?"

"_Vei_—yes—Starbuck—"

"Uhura!"

She responded to the insistence with an apologetic word to the woman, came quickly over, sat down and kindly introduced herself to the man before looking at Jim or Bones. They didn't have to explain anything because the Orion started talking on his own accord; the captain and McCoy heard the slightly mispronounced call sign again in his rushed words. Uhura had her brows lowered in concentration, put up a hand to pause him, then started to translate. "Okay: 'I talked to a fighter calling himself 'Starbuck' and I'd like to know if he's alive'..."

"He?"

Uhura shrugged.

Looking at the Orion man, he interrupted, "No, no, Starbuck's a woman...Are you sure—?"

Uhura was already running off another question; he looked a bit startled before he responded. " 'We only communicated on a private channel, and quickly, we only had so much time before the Prenyd systems picked up on her vessel.'"

"Do you know what—?" Jim didn't get out all of his question before the man interrupted, getting out so much of his explanation at once that Uhura just patiently waited for him to come to a stop. When he did, she hesitated, processing it herself before explaining.

"When he first saw her, he intended just to warn her, tell her to leave before she was seen, but she promised him more help was coming and he explained about the alliance and—"

"He—_He_ told her? To hit his own _bridge_?" Jim was moving around Bones to position himself closer to the man, a kind of reflexive reaction to a sudden realization of admiration.

"Yes, but that's not..." Uhura hesitated again. "He says it's his fault if she got hurt, and I haven't..."

She quickly worded a couple more questions, and the others waited in confusion before she sat up a bit straighter in a dawning understanding.

"Oh," she said. "She asked him to warn the others that they were about to be attacked and get the bridge cleared..."

The realization settled into all of them before she finished.

"She gave up her window of escape to save a handful of their crew?" Kirk said it with a tense, brittle sound in his voice, the whole thing not quite sinking in even though the facts of it made complete sense.

As if he had already decided as much, McCoy was only heard muttering a defeated, "Of course she did."

"Get his name?" Jim requested.

"He said already. It's Parnev," Uhura explained. Parnev was eager to explain even more, and she listened patiently, eventually interpreting to Kirk: "He's almost positive that she would've been fired at by the secondary ship, the one that's on our port right now. You might start with them if you think they'll give you any information."

Jim nodded gratefully at Parnev and said, "Thank you."

"...Wel-come," he replied uncertainly.

A moment after Jim returned to McCoy's side, the doctor asked, "What are you gonna do?"

"I don't think we can really coerce them into giving us any information any time soon, not unless it's supplemental to what I've got Giotto trying to harp out of them." Jim shook his head tiredly. "_Reliant_ should be here soon and when they get here we need to head to the rendezvous point. If we get anything else on Kara from them, it'll be after time already tells."

Jim was a bit jumpy, already starting off to leave med bay; he was cut back by Bones saying, "Jim."

He turned and waited.

McCoy hesitated like he wasn't quite sure what he was about to say. He finally asked, "How long are we gonna wait?"

The captain gave a hollow shrug. "As long as we told her we would."


	8. Chapter 8

They smoked the last of McCoy's cigarillos with a bottle of whiskey, sitting against the observatory window just after 0200. Jim had just requested the time from the computer and he pronounced, "Three hours" before he let his head thunk back against the wall. The time left was just a flat number now; there was really no good reason for her to be late if she was coming back at all, and it seemed like a motion of respect to meet her departure with such a long dilemma. Hanging in their present location was practically just an act of mourning. Bones took a swig.

"I never got to introduce her to Pike," Jim muttered sadly. "Would've liked Pike."

"She could still meet Pike."

"Yeah. Right. She's just hopping over to Starfleet Academy to hand in an application right now..."

"Stop it, Jim."

"I'm woeful, Bones," Jim said in a bitterly edged double-negative kind of sarcasm. "Woe is me, what have I done..."

"You didn't do anything and you know it. She didn't even make it up to you. A lot of those people probably owe her their lives, I'm not gonna—"

"Yeah, but what the hell, I still wanna know, what the_ fuck _was with you?" Jim complained, not accusingly, just in frustrated confusion. "The woman talks a little crazy now and then, she talks like it's an accident that she's alive, and you tell me to let her go on this golden opportunity to go and—_crucify_ herself..." His voice trailed off with more of a dry delicacy.

"No...No, it wasn't like that," McCoy protested, sure. "I think maybe you've been too careful with her. You've been expecting you're gonna slip up with her since day one, and I know, she can be crazy, but...If you can't stop the bomb from going off, you gotta at least point it in the right direction. Tell her there are lives to be saved and she'll get it done."

"Otherwise, what?" Jim bluntly said, "She'll blow _herself _to pieces?"

McCoy gave a resistant cringe, shaking his head. "Tell you what it's like: What kind of a wasted mess do you think you'd be if you'd never saved anybody?" He let Jim turn that over for a second before going on. "I've never told you this, but maybe there are people...like you, like your father, that just won't settle for looking after their own lives. I think something she was always holding onto just fell out of her hands when she found us, and she's got to find something, she just has to do this big thing before her life is really hers."

The captain took a swig, wiped his mouth off. "I guess you'd think that way, I mean...you're the spiritual one." He said that with a lofty gesture, returning McCoy's puzzled glare with a look that meant, 'Yes, it's that obvious.'

"...I'm not talking about fate, Jim, I'm just talking about people."

"_People_. I tell you something, though...There is _something_ about her..." He shook his head, collecting his thoughts. "I used to read about a lot of old, like twentieth to twenty-first century psychology and philosophy stuff. She got me thinking a lot about this school of dream analysis that talks about what they call a 'shadow'...basically how everybody has something in them, this dark stuff, this bad thing they want, that they're attracted to. And supposedly you can be a whole person, you can be better, if you just confront these awful things that you want to do. You have to confront it and move past it, but theoretically I never really got..._how_. Especially if someone wanted to die, cause how do you compromise with that?"

McCoy was giving Jim a guarded, slow sidelong glance.

"I don't even know what I'm saying, just..." Jim shook his head again slowly. "She has this whole life behind her it sounds to me she was never able to fully live, and I kinda wonder now which half of her was ever here."

McCoy speculated for just a second, then lifted his eyebrows and reached to take the bottle out of Jim's lazy grasp. "That's it. I'm cutting you off."

"What?—"

"Jim..." McCoy sighed, nearly laughing grimly. "I don't want to fucking talk about this anymore, cause the crazier you sound, I just hear 'Dead, dead, dead'."

"I don't think she's dead," he muttered. "She's just gonna go haunt somebody else for a while..."

"For Christ sake. Don't try to tell me she's dead," McCoy rebuked gruffly, not able to collect that that really was pretty far from what his friend was saying. Putting out his cigar as he stood up, he almost angrily argued, "She just isn't coming back, is all."

Jim watched him starting to leave, not managing anything out of his mouth that would do any good; he reached into his pocket and his hand closed around something, but then it cringed back out empty.

.

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.

She took off her helmet and threw it into the sand.

The beach stretched before her with its water hushing up and off of the shoreline, the sky above a serene blue, and she took her gloves off and walked forward from where she'd landed the vessel, meeting it all with a look in her eyes like it needed to explain itself. She was overwhelmed and out of place and exhausted, didn't know exactly what she was doing when she dropped onto her knees and clutched some of the sand into her palms, angry, interrogating. For the first time in a long time she sort of prayed, but it was demanding, it was_ I could use a hand or a SIGN or something, if you've got a frakking minute, please._

It was all pretty enough, but that couldn't matter to her anymore. She came here to say she found it and then leave, but here she was: alone on a beach, feeling like it put something literal to how alone she'd been for months now and wanting to cry or scream because she wasn't supposed to get here by herself. It would be sick to feel lucky. It would be pointless to feel guilty. There was nowhere to stand and that was why she was here, running from something, feeling like she'd just have to keep running on and on until something finally snuffed her.

She wasn't able to tell how much time was going by, a murky blur moving with the water as she realized she was crying after all. Crying, for the first time in gods know how long. After a while the tears dissipated into restless anger, her head crooked down into her forearms as she rocked back and forth and let out a few abstracted curses. She'd damned every grain of the sand to hell just getting it out of her system before her hand fell clutching through it into something that pointed into her palm. Her mind interrupted itself with a meek _Ow_.

The two-inch something came up in her fingers and this might really be the boring part, the story she'll never care to tell, because it's so simple; she brushed the sand off and blinked at it, its slight weight on her palm, as distantly confused as if someone had just used a word she did not know. And it was good after all that she came here alone, because how would anyone understand, how she fell into looking as if she'd just found something she was looking for, how she closed it in her grasp and brought her wrist up somewhere to her mouth and just laughed through the last of her tears. Like, _oh, what the hell_. She had to let something save her.

.

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.

.

She managed to get out of her suit and just stow it in a wad inside the vessel, but she still got a look about a block later from a twenty-something man who seemed to have watched her land. When she started up the walkway next to a glittering lake, he stammered, "Are you allowed to park that around here?"

She looked back and just shrugged. "I don't know."

The guy narrowed his eyes at her. "Isn't that a Starfleet logo on your shirt?" She rolled her eyes. "Where did you come from?"

"Oh my god." This came excitedly from the skinnier one sitting next to him on the bench. "Are you—no...You're not Kara Thrace?"

She cut to a sharp stop in her lazy tracks across the pavement.

"Who's Kara Thrace?" the first one asked.

"She's—Are you really? Wow. _Wow_. What are you doing _here_, I must have missed something..."

"Who_ is_ she?"

Kara interrupted, flatly demanding, "How did you know that?"

"Your picture was in the news," the enthusiastic one said with a shrug. To his co-worker, he just said, "You really should read the Federation Journal, it's interesting stuff. She's this big deal refugee...Not much on her yet, though." He looked at her as he added, "The captain won't let the press send anything to you."

"I didn't even know anybody wanted to talk to me," she replied with a look of distaste.

The young man laughed. "I'm Tim."

"Hey, Tim." She cocked her head down the street towards a place with a logo that Tim had on his shirt. "You work that fancy-ass looking tattoo parlor?"

He was still recovering from his excitement, but he managed to say, "Sure do."

"Is it a good place to go?" she asked, in her own particular way that demanded comfortable honesty.

"If you want the real thing," he replied proudly. "We use Romulan ink, so it's not removable, and would definitely take longer than the ones you've gotten before..."

"Romulan?" she repeated, slightly bewildered.

"Yeah." He shrugged. "Tattoos are symbols of grieving in their culture, so it goes without saying they take it pretty seriously."

She slowly put on a crooked smirk, looked down the street again. "Symbols of grieving, huh?" Her hand went up to her neck before she remembered where her dog tag was, and then she asked, "You got something I can draw with?"

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It was unusual for Kirk to take an alpha shift off for having too little sleep, but everyone knew that probably wasn't really the reason he gave the conn over to Spock. Once the clock was up he probably just didn't want to have to give the order to leave. The sect of the regular bridge crew who were there waiting for the round number were unusually quiet, even for their most tired mornings, not saying anything about their lost pilot but exchanging regretful looks instead of quick greetings.

It was eight minutes till, when Sulu sat up in his chair, followed by a mirroring motion from Chekov next to him.

"Did you see—?"

"Yes—Werifying..." Chekov made some tiny anxious oral sounds, then pointedly swiveled his chair to address Spock as well as the general bridge, smiling. "It's her, sir."

Uhura's hand was already over the channel switch just before she announced, "Vessel initiating message..." She put the signal on open audio and said, "Welcome back, Starbuck."

Spock added, "You have clearance to dock on starboard at your will, Thrace."

"Thanks, Mr. Spock." A couple grins played over the crew as her laugh rang crisply through. She sounded happy and tired. "You know, I never thought I'd say this, but it's pretty damn nice to hear your voice."

Sulu was laughing the loudest at that, and there was a pause before Spock leaned back into the comm receiver and replied, "Likewise."

A couple minutes later when Kara was pushing her helmet off and crawling out of her Firebird, she sighed, trying not to smile at the sight of the captain, who had his hands at his waist down at the bottom of the ladder and was most certainly inot/i smiling.

He caught her helmet with a slap when she threw it down to him. "I bet you thought that was pretty funny."

"No," she shook her head, still at the top. "Not really. But this is..."

She put a finger up before she leaned back into the cockpit; Kirk's face scrunched up and he demanded, "Where the hell did you _go_, I was—"

She made it quickly down the ladder after producing what looked like an old-fashioned souvenir postcard you could still get from some recreation areas, usually in the kinds of places Kirk could never imagine actually wanting to visit. He was still putting on his agitation when she handed it to him and impatiently gestured for him to turn it over. He ignored the doodle she'd scribbled on the white side, revealing the other to have a yellowy sketch of a tree, a large logo of fat letters that read: "IOWA."

He lost it. "No fucking way..."

"Yeah," she laughed back with him, with that confident tilt of her head, and his hand was grabbing hers in a shake that turned quickly into a hug that turned quickly into snuggling her up enough to spin her feet back and forth a little with an affectionately annoyed grunt.

"I lifted that from the gift store at the local museum. Speaking of which, you never told me your dad was such a big shot," she accused. "The exhibit's a frakking joke, though."

"I've never visited it myself," Kirk confessed with a shrug. "I guess that's another story to tell."

There was a pause of the captain really weighing in where she'd gone and what else she might have done, understanding more now why she'd had to run off for a while. He looked like he was being dragged into the grey area between drunk and hung-over; since her head was remembering its migraine from hours and hours before, she gave him a wince.

"So..." He quietly asked, "Why'd you come back?"

She scoffed softly and kicked him in the foot, but then her answer was muttered with more vulnerability. "I don't know, just...Disappearing on people gets old after a while."

He smiled and returned the little kick with similar affection as she started looking around. "Oh, yeah...You might want to track down my chief medical officer? Make sure her he got the message that you're alive?"

She said nothing for a few seconds, just staring him down. "I hate you."

"Great. Want a job?"

"_Frak_ you..." In the middle of reaching to stab Jim a smack in the arm she stepped back, hands going up in a guarded way that preceded a giddy vocal noise that approached fast over Kirk's shoulder. The captain jumped back a little as Gaila came storming up to squeeze Kara and plant a quick giggly kiss on her cheek. "Ugh, stop," Kara cringed. "You'll get green on me."

"Aw, fuck you! Love you, honey," she chimed before she went running off again.

Kirk watched her skittering away, then looked back at Kara, glaring at her for a few seconds. "Oh, wait a fucking minute—"

"—I got things to do." Kara gave a raise of her brows and patted Jim hard on the shoulder before wandering off.

"...Oh, hey."

She turned back when she'd gotten several steps away, and he was bunching and flinging something; she caught her dog tag in a swoop down above her waist, weighing it in a grasp and just looking back at Kirk for a second. Her smile was calm and clever, resonating the best of her as she put the chain quickly around her neck and walked away.

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.

He'd gone looking for her after he heard the quick rumors, and when he finally gave up into asking the computer, he didn't know why it surprised him that she apparently might have been trying to find him.

She was in medical, only wriggled halfway out of her space suit she had bunched down her waist, muttering, "Hey, no, take it easy" to Parnev. She was laughing with Gaila who was on his other side explaining something in Orion as far as she could keep a straight face.

He didn't realize he had stopped in his tracks and begun blatantly just staring until she saw him, but he didn't bother looking away. Her grin faded to a different fainter smile. She met his piercing glance for a short moment before just sort of shrugging. It was like "Sorry" and "I'll never apologize for anything" rolled into one expression, and the doctor bit down what he might have actually said if he could remember the last time he'd been so damn happy to see anybody.

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"What is—What the hell...?"

He'd started checking her over a couple minutes before as if that was actually the reason they'd escaped into his office, and his tricorder was going a bit haywire when he passed over the back of her shoulder. "Wanna see?" Kara was offering eagerly, turning her back fully and shucking off her shirt to then pull her sports bra up by her thumbs, far enough for him to get a look at the tattoo that started above her right shoulder blade.

"..._That's _what you did?" McCoy demanded, then shook his head. "I swear, the way you spend your shore time..."

"Shut up."

"—No, I do want to see."

He lightly lifted her bra up just a couple inches after she started to turn around; she leaned forward into the table, still, as he examined the image of an ancient flagship that stretched a narrow sketch down half the length of her back. It was a markedly different style from her other tattoos, a little more detailed. The ship's handsome angular flag carried the phoenix emblem he recognized: it was on her dog tag, but he remembered it from the side of her sleeve on her old flight suit.

"Why that kind of ship?" he asked.

"I don't know." She laughed weakly. She was turning something over and around in her fingers, something she'd been fiddling with since she came in. "I guess I just like old things."

He smiled. "What is that?"

She turned and hoisted herself up to sit on his desk, finally setting the little figure down. It was pretty: some kind of angel with an archaic simplicity in its shape, a bronze color. "I found it on Earth. It uh...It looks just like something I used to have."

He gave one look at it, then his eyes traveled back to hers, an eyebrow going up.

"I know, it's not the same thing...the same one. It can't be. That's not the point." She was already laughing at her own absurdity, but she shook it off and just asked, "If you were going to, like...forget that you'd been someplace...is there anything you can think of that you or somebody else could leave, just to tell yourself that everything's fine?"

His gaze on her was more somberly considering, but she couldn't really tell in what way. She cleared her throat and said, "I know this sounds crazy, but I can't just keep trying not to sound crazy because—I found this and somehow it was like somebody was trying to tell me something. And I just know that everything was okay, like in some way I never actually left them, and somehow...they made it. To Earth..."

Her voice just dwindled off. She finally met his eyes like she was expecting the worst. He didn't look particularly different.

"I don't think you're crazy." He itched at the back of his neck, shrugged. "...I just don't."

She looked like she wasn't prepared to respond to that, and he just chuckled.

"Some doctor I turned out to be, huh?"

"Well, it's your fault anyway..." She smiled, shaking her head.

"How's that?"

She brushed a lock of hair off her forehead, looking away for a moment. "You drive me somewhere past all the crazy and back to sane, I guess."

He scoffed it off with an amused headshake, but she wasn't laughing. She watched him go over something on his PADD for a few seconds with her hands sitting at her sides and him just leaning against the desk a couple steps away. He hadn't really touched her at all, not even for a brief hug or anything; he'd been pointedly as detached as possible, just skimming against her, when he examined her, when she let him look at her tattoo. Somewhere inside Kara, a voice was counting to three.

"I love you."

There was a hesitation almost like it was possible that she had been talking to somebody else. Then he very slowly looked up at her, and he looked at her for a very long time, before he demanded, "_What_?"

"It's like this," she began with surprising certainty. "For_ years_ I have been able to count the people that I really know and care about on my two hands, and ever since this..._hiccup_ landed me here, I've been down to even less. I just hiked all the frakking way to Earth and saw enough people to be pretty certain of the fact that maybe I'm okay with that, maybe I even prefer a small crowd, but the fucked up thing is I've just become more and more of a lousy person with everyone I've lost and that's not gonna cut it anymore. I still don't know why I'm here, but I've figured out why I'm staying, and you can stand there looking uncomfortable because you don't know what it's like, that's fine. It's not like I'm proposing. It's not like I'm even saying I want to be with you. I just don't want to wait, until we've spent shore leave together or until I've met your daughter or until one of us starts to fuck it up so bad that I start to panic, cause I probably need all of you a lot more than you need me and you can afford the bullshit, but I can't. So I don't know what the hell it even means, but—I love you."

It didn't matter that her voice cracked off at the very last because it was almost like he couldn't focus on what she was really saying past a certain point, past the instinctive feeling that probably made him want to ask if this was the first time she'd ever strung this many words together that hadn't ended in something closer to "Go to hell." He was baffled, softened, paralyzed, but finally something reached up and pulled him by the roots: In a blunt movement he came over and he stepped in between her legs and he pulled her in and pulled her in, nestling her tight where she rested herself around him. His hand massaged at the back of her neck where her head landed into his shoulder, his other arm nesting around her waist. They both took in a sigh, his breath coming out in a half-formed word of profanity like he was letting something finally hurt and finally feel good at the same time.

It was like this, kind of terrifying and perfect. Snug against him and frantic, she laughed out just one word: "You."

He needed nothing else before he finally kissed her like he'd just about had it with not being able to, exhausted by longing as she was the one to frame her fingers in a clinging hunger at his stubble, opening slowly, then not slowly. And quickly he was pulling her over to the bright red futon and zipping, ripping her out of the bottom of her jock suit as she urged his hands astray to the soft skin, waist and hipbones and legs like a gust of hidden perfection all unraveling from the noisy tangling garment and her softer clothes that slipped off with sighs.

And she pushed him undone and he carefully lifted her over him, indulging in the bend of her limbs on either side of him as she rhythmically took and frayed it all apart. His hair came spiking up by the clutch of her tough fingers when he moaned half-words against her mouth, everything he'd ever called her, anything he thought of. The only time she said anything it was a short hitching groan, just "Doc," like always. He didn't seem to mind.

After, when she lay on her back and he was reaching for the blanket still wadded under the couch from when she'd used it, she had a longer list of things to do than she could remember having in a very long time. She could use a hell of a sandwich and fifteen showers and about as many hours of sleep and her body was currently picking sleep first, but after that she had reading to do, and after that she was going to look into finding something to paint with, and maybe some time after or among that she was going to sit down and talk to somebody until things started running their course and she started saying some names out loud she hadn't even let herself think of in a long time. Maybe...

After a while he scooped himself slowly out of bed and in a few seconds was tucking the blanket back around her, and she sure as hell heard him this time when he kissed her temple firmly and just said, "You too," must have because she stole one more kiss on the mouth before her eyelids won the war and she was out with his smell, both the sour-clean of hospital and something more sharply rooted in his skin that didn't remind her of anything but him, washing against her. She felt bone-tired, pained and raw, and new.

.

.

.

.

"I don't think I've ever been in this room before..."

"Shh, shh..." Kirk gave an anxious quieting motion at McCoy without steering his eyes to the side, looking through the glass at where an Orion teenager sat at a table with his arms crossed, next to Lieutenant Bratch, a translator. Equipped with only a standard security uniform and messing with the core of a pear she'd been casually eating, Kara was now kicking the third chair out of the way to sit on the table, mimicking his crossed arms, and speaking to him in a mocking chattiness. There was a quick echo of flat murmuring from the specialist.

McCoy supposed he was talking to Spock, then, when he muttered, "Is that really effective? Interrogating in an unknown language?"

Spock was eager to note to him, "Fascinatingly, his physiology is indicating slight anxiety in response to Thrace's remarks before they are even translated." Jim turned a quick indulged grin back at McCoy in response to that. The doctor smirked.

"Captain..."

"What?"

"I am becoming wary of how Thrace plans to proceed, considering that her experience in interrogation was in a setting that permitted resorting to methods of torture..."

"Are you really second-guessing this? It was your idea, wasn't it?"

Spock raised an irritated brow that indicated that the captain was pretty much right, even as he protested, "I merely pointed out that every person aboard the _Enterprise_ who was trained in interrogation techniques had failed to successfully extract information from any of the Prenyd's Orion allies, save one passenger."

"It was your idea, Spock." McCoy granted this one to Jim, amused by the science officer's little miffed twitch. Now that Jim's attention was momentarily less intent on Kara's work, he just grunted, "Since when is this our job anyway?"

"Well, it wouldn't be." Jim scraped an itch at the back of his neck, sighing. "But we pretty much volunteered to deal with it ourselves when we took off for the rendezvous instead of waiting out more help."

McCoy watched Kara, the way she put on a crisp little aloof show of being fed up because she had better things to do, and he wasn't sure how her impatience was more convincing than any of the half a dozen officers who had been trying this already, but apparently it was. "You think she's dealing with it?"

"I think she is dealing with it," Jim confirmed without looking McCoy's way.

When the doctor came back from popping out for some coffee he immediately took in an excited stirring, Jim getting up out of his chair as Kara appeared in the surveillance room slapping a list in front of him. Acknowledging McCoy and his drink she immediately asked, "Where's mine?"

"How...?" Kirk was incredulous. "I don't even..."

"Miss Thrace." Spock had been listening in, and his tone was patiently chastising. "You may not yet be a serving member of Starfleet, but the fourth paragraph of Starfleet's forty-ninth security protocol dictates that—"

"Yeah, I read that policy," Kara cut off with a motion of her hand. "Nothing in it that says I can't..._suggest_ the possibility of torture to a subject who may not be aware of the regulations."

Spock blinked, his frame tensing noticeably in response to this. "Are you saying that you threatened the prisoner in a non-verbal manner?"

"Did you _hear_ me threaten him verbally? Like I said. I implied." Kara shrugged. Jim broke out into a barking fit of laughter, clapping his hands.

"Lieutenant Giotto," Kirk said, suddenly on the comm. "I'm gonna let Starbuck hold onto the uniform for a while. If you've got somebody to train a cadet, I've got an off-planet recruit for you."

"...Absolutely, sir."

In the last moment Kara's eyes had lit up, incredulous, but Spock cut in, "Captain?"

"Yes, Mr. Spock?" Kirk replied innocently, and he already had the next part memorized. "Protocol follows that in a time of war or emergency, foreign aid can be promoted to a status comparable to rank they hold among their own people, and in the case that this happens on a full-length mission, said crewmember can serve for a period of up to two years without their position coming under review by the Federation board. This is, by the way, the second article of that policy. The third you may be more than familiar with..."

"Regulation 571, which concerns immediate promotion of cadets in cases of emergency, which allowed your promotion to the position of first officer which then allowed you to assume and keep my former place as captain aboard this vessel..." Spock's recitation was terse and also absent-minded; he was distracted by the fact that this had all gone researched and figured out right under his nose, and if he had no problem with the captain's logic or decisions, that was entirely beside the point. He opened his mouth to say something else, but then his lips snapped shut.

Kara snickered, and as she went by Spock she gave him a hearty smack on the arm. "Through the nose, commander."


	9. Epilogue

The mess hall was filled with the random group who had the time: Chekov, Scotty, Uhura, Gaila, Nurse Chapel (who had been pulled along by Uhura), Ensign Riley (pulled along by Gaila), and an engineering worker who had been invited with a shrug after giving Kara her new layered haircut. Kirk was attempting to keep order over the chatty enthusiasm, insisting, "for _once_," on "some level of propriety." Gaila and Kara, naturally, were wrecking this goal systematically, and there was increasingly less he could do about it.

While Kara was pouring champagne in one of the cheap glasses, Gaila said, "Did they even get you the skirt uniform?"

Kara snorted. "I can't get a jock suit over that."

"Oh, so on the off chance that you are needed in the viper on short notice, you have to wear pants all the time," Uhura said sarcastically.

Kara wrinkled her nose. "I think you can make up for it,_ Lieutenant_, I've never seen you in the pants except when going planetside."

"I haven't either," Jim agreed enthusiastically.

Uhura shrugged. "I just don't like pants. I grew up in the heat."

"You...You don't like pants?" Kirk stammered.

"Kara, you've got such nice stems," Gaila was whining. "You should show them off."

"You're the one with the _stems_, babe," Kara teased, lightly slapping a green knee.

"Hey!"

"It's alright, you've got that red hair," Kara pacified, over-girlishly assuring, "You're like a great big rose."

"Aw, thank you!" Gaila cooed.

"Propriety..." Kirk warned, rolling his eyes at the whole show.

"What?" the two replied in innocent unison, and Kara pointed out, "It's my party, captain."

"You're right. You're right, it is your party, get over here." Kara came to stand at the front and Jim said, "Uhura, you wanted to..."

The communications officer excitedly stood up, coming over with a PADD to read off of. "Ooh, ooh, yes, I've never gotten to do this before. Alright, just hold your hand up..."

After Kara was sworn in rather informally, the little gathering felt like any other particularly good day in one of the rec rooms; at one point Kirk came over and apologized, promising, "I'll get some Admiral to pin a fancy thing on you next time we have an inspection, I know this isn't much..."

"Come on, Kirk, you know I don't care." Kara reached for his empty flute and reached to refill it for him. "By the way, Gaila and I and a couple others are going to continue tormenting you unless you let up on the ambassador's ball..."

"Oh, that's what..._You're_ in on that?"

She shrugged. "I don't give a shit either way, I just owe Gaila one."

The fact that Kara was in on this battle of pranks and torturous teasing made Kirk realize he should just give up; with an aggravated gesture he sighed and dropped his hand to the table before beckoning Gaila over with a mock-saccharine smile.

"Yes, captain?"

"You may inform the masses of your victory," Jim hinted, allowing her hope to surge before he explained tersely. "Women may wear a conservative—_conservative_—garment of their own choosing in lieu of the usual uniform to the ball following the Babel conference..." A couple others had overheard and were laughing in the enthusiasm of spectators. "...Men will be wearing the standard dress uniform, sorry, but I don't even wanna know what Sulu would try to get away with."

Gaila was positively giddy as she thanked him, and when she went back to telling Riley a story Kara was just shaking her head in mild annoyance. She and Gaila really didn't get each other, and their friendship seemed solely based off the incredulous joke of not understanding how it had happened, but it worked somehow.

Kara's shoulders flinched in a shiver when a group of fingers spidered at the back of her neck, but she heard the deep chuckle before she turned and elbowed McCoy in the ribs behind her. "Hey, bird," he muttered casually as he gave her a lazy squeeze.

"Thought you were stitching and bitching."

"Yeah, well, I left somebody bleedin' on the floor so I could come and tell you congratulations and all that." They smirked at each other. "So, congratulations. And all that."

She gave him a cynical once-over, dryly charmed. "Thanks."

Kirk turned from his chatter with Scotty to greet Bones. "You ready for this today?"

"Christ. As ready as I'm gonna be..."

"Meta III," Jim explained flatly to Kara, regarding the away mission they'd be taking in several hours. "We have to beam in right in the middle of their damn jungle, which is, I shit you not, on record in one of the data books as the stickiest place in Federation space."

"Oh, it is _not_," McCoy disbelieved, while Kara started laughing in puzzlement.

"It's because...," Jim paused for emphasis, "these things, which are sort of like, I don't know, feathered big cats, lay their eggs in this swampy sticky wet mess. And there's no way to get around it without the possibility of alarming the inhabitants." He said this last with a dainty, annoyed gesture with his hands. He was in a good mood; respect for the authority of Starfleet rules was therefore hard to come by anywhere on the ship.

"I say we skip it," McCoy joked bluntly. "You can write up a bogus log."

With a grin Kirk asked, "Hey, Kara, you wanna fill in for my fragile CMO?"

"No way, man, I'll kill you if my first away mission is that lame..." To McCoy she grinned and said, "Don't throw up on anybody."

She was rough on the teasing today. He shook his head tightly. "Girl, you are gonna _get_ it next time you land yourself in sick bay..."

The conference was the next day, marking the first shore time taken by the entire crew since Jim had taken command. He and Bones got into their dress gold and blue and to the bar pretty fast and were able to leisurely watch the crowds thicken, picking out members of their own crew as they appeared among the myriad of species. McCoy was leaning in to order his second drink when the captain's glance was caught back and to the left, gaping.

"...Jim. Uh..."

"What?" he was shooting back unapologetically. "You can't sneak up on people when you look like that, Kara."

They'd both probably assumed she'd just opt for the women's skirted dress uniform like a few of the other female crewmembers, but here she was in a deep green and black gown, simple but forming to her in all the right places, and her _hair_...

"Jesus fuck." McCoy didn't miss a beat. "You wanna dance?"

Coming up next to him at the bar, she gave the doctor a shove of mock-distaste. "Nah, you're too tall." She took a sip of what he'd just ordered, flinching and giggling before she had the glass back down as he dug an irritated tickle into her side. "_Stop_—okay I'm kidding I'm kidding, stop stop...But later. I've been wanting a drink for hours."

Jim was leaning in. "...You gotta dance with me first, you know."

Already mildly irritated that she couldn't spot the bartender, Kara cocked an eyebrow at him, wondering how he'd already managed to get more drunk than he'd probably intended. "Why?"

"Cause the alternative is dancing with me after Bones, who is not the type to dance more than once throughout the evening."

"You are such an adolescent for thinking that out," she informed him. With a sigh she took a sample of the captain's drink and after setting it down muttered, "Alright, let's go."

The band had picked up into playing a stuttering sort of lounge music that Kara kinda liked. Jim was pretty good at faking the old-fashioned ballroom gusto, considering the cocktails were already going to his head. On his way to the bar Scotty only looked at them long enough to intone, "Magnificent." Jim assured her it had something to do with the dress.

"So, um..." He looked directly at her now, and then he pointed a finger over her shoulder, towards the bar. "When is that gonna happen?"

She just slowly reacted by rolling her eyes, pacifying, "It's happening, Jim."

"Oh, is it really?"

She just shrugged, her usual defensively indifferent response.

"Does he refer to you as his girlfriend to his daughter?"

"I...have no idea."

"Listen. I do get it. I mean, you're still adjusting to this new life, it's a bad idea to get into a relationship now because you don't want to define your life on the basis of that relationship, etcetera—whatever..."

He gave a lofty wave of his hand while Kara attempted to digest the sound of him talking like a self-help lecture.

He slowly cocked an eyebrow, gave a come-on-you-can-trust-me kind of tilt of his head. "You, um. Been with anybody else since you got back?"

"No." After a second she glared. "Try not to look so impressed."

"Kara...Let me tell you a secret, okay?"

"Ugh..."

"Now, listen. I am...just a_ little_ bit in love with you—"

She immediately cut him off, trying not to laugh, "Right, first of all, I'm pretty sure everybody knows that..."

"Nah—Shut up, that's not it, that's not it. Look." They were more loosely even dancing at all now that the music had gone to a slower number, and his expression grew into more emphasis. "You _are _magnificent, and I somewhat feel the need to say? If you're not on the market, get the hell off the fence. Cause oh, my iGod/i..." This last exclamation was him looking back towards the bar again with raised eyebrows, now hushing his voice down just slightly as he evenly confided, "The guy would wait forever for you."

With a small smile that averted his glance, she brushed a couple nonexistent crumbs off of Jim's jacket, then lifted an eyebrow at him.

"Don't make him?"

"I will take it into consideration, Captain."

"I'm glad we had this talk. Now if you'll excuse me..." Jim gave a mixture of a cringe and a smile off to the far corner of the ballroom. "I need to go convince my first officer he's having a good time."

"And good luck with that."

About as soon as Jim took off she looked around to see McCoy coming up behind, grinning with a happily flushed Nurse Chapel. He quickly grabbed Kara's hand. "Come on, you gotta watch this."

"Not so fast. If somebody's getting drunk under the table, it's nothing I haven't seen before," Kara promised sardonically, gripping his hand to make him stop heading back the other way. She pulled up to him and slid her arms high around his neck, her expression playfully insistent.

He gave Chapel a shrug, took up with the swaying. "So what did Jim want?"

"Nevermind." She looked closely at him, amused. "Every time I start to wonder what I could possibly do to get you in a good mood somebody else does the job."

"Well, I could think of a couple things you could do..."

She snickered a little. "And you're not even drunk."

"I gotta work at 0600, what do you expect?"

They were quiet for a moment, and he looked her over again, still a little incredulous.

"You really do look...like..." He laughed at his own incoherence. "Like anyone who's going home with you is a lucky son of a bitch, is what you look like."

"You're not the one who needs to make an event out of it. Everyone else here should get more than one look cause they're not gonna see these legs again for a _long_ time."

"Yeah. Still..." When his voice trailed off, she gave him an inquisitive look. He leaned and pressed his cheek to her head. "I gotta take what I can get of you."

She slowly pulled back and looked at him, eyes narrowing a bit. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Yeah, I know." He quietly said, "There are some days, though, you're not all here."

She had a just faintly sad smile that turned sweet. She pulled closer into him again. Her tone was stronger, a little sultry, when she tiptoed and intoned up next to his ear, "How much can you get of me before 0600?"

Kirk's confusion on the matter of them was not altogether uncalled for: Not that he knew this specifically, but the relationship had so far staggered forward from where it began not without meaning but in the same vein of Kara only telling McCoy she loved him because it was true. She'd been up to her neck in training since getting back from Earth and they hadn't had that much time to be around each other, but she had invited herself into his quarters on more than one occasion of basic intuition: Sometimes he'd complain about his day so that she didn't have to talk at all before he began unswervingly to make love to her, sometimes she'd come right in and sit down to talk for over an hour without them ever touching, and there had been the night after Ensign Jakes bled to death right in sick bay after beaming back a couple minutes too late when she'd come in to bluntly finish off his scotch for him and make him go to bed. Even if Jim didn't get what the hold-up was on calling it what it was becoming, there had been something steady and reassuring in watching all the gaps slowly fill up as if they had all the time in the world.

And then there were the days when he was calmed up on post-mission mirth and if he found her by herself he'd sneak up and grab her around the shoulders and mutter some stupid shit against the back of her neck, when she got tired of needing an excuse. And McCoy's answer now was kind of like that; his eyes glazed over the crowd around them for just a second before he leaned down and kissed her, purposefully, somewhat inappropriately, until she was too impressed not to start chuckling and break it off.

McCoy then saw something behind her that made him shake his head in annoyance, and she didn't need him to explain who was most likely directing some overenthusiastic gesture at them. "I'm gonna kick his ass."

Instead of kicking Jim's ass and in fact instead of leaving the party as quickly as possible with Kara, he wound up seated in the grass in a courtyard outside on the far left next to her; on her right was Jim and then Spock, who apparently had perpetrated wandering outdoors in order to satisfy his curiosity about the slightly luminescent flowers kept in the garden.

"No, that...Is _that_ Remus?"

Kirk leaned over to position his sight in line with hers, and he reached to gently knock her pointing hand up a couple notches. "Yep. And _we_ are about to go..that-a-way."

She cocked a brow at where he repositioned her. "Where was Vulcan?" she asked quietly.

Jim blinked up hesitantly. It was a lot harder to point out a black space. Finally Spock interjected, "It would form a rough triangle with the two that appear red close to Remus."

After a moment she sighed and muttered, "Hope I get to kick some Romulan ass some time."

"That would be an inadvisable venture, considering the superior physical strength of the species."

Jim slowly looked over and narrowed his eyes at Spock, like reminding him he'd left something out.

"...And it would possibly be based on a prejudice."

Kara snickered. Jim felt the need to say to Kara, "You know you can't say things like that around—"

"Yeah, yeah. Gods, you and the admirals. It sounds to me like they're a bunch of—"

"They are, they are," McCoy cut in, laughing. "Well, sometimes. Who knows, Jim, maybe one of these days you'll be—"

"Hell no." Jim shook his head, his glance relaxed upwards. "No. Not me. I'm staying out here."

Kara slowly grinned at that.

"...What?"

"Nothing."

After a moment, she suddenly shifted and leaned back, resting her back to the grass to gaze lazily up at the sky.

Jim was the first to follow, smirking at the slight silliness of it, then McCoy with a smile and a scoff. Spock looked back as if to protest, said nothing and sat up stiffly for another moment. Then he looked back again, furtive, and slowly rested his back onto the ground with his hands rested primly over his abdomen.

They lay in silence below space. Kara felt time pressed into her grasp like a hurried gift from nobody, and in her mind she promised to a hundred ghosts, _I'm okay_.


End file.
